CASE STUDY

Disguise turns
the tide for OurFlag Means
Death production

www.disguise.one

Summary
After a critically-acclaimed ﬁrst season, theteam behind Our Flag Means Death was looking
for opportunities to streamline production costs
while delivering a second season that lived up to
the opening run of episodes. After moving theproduction of the show to New Zealand, theproducers sought the creative and technicalservices of Disguise Nz.
Instead of taking the cast and crew to the sea for ﬁlming,
Disguise created a custom virtual production set with asprawling LED backdrop that could project scenery live behind
the actors during ﬁlming along with additional scenery andprops. This novel approach to the shoot enabled the team tobring speed, precision and budgetary control to a story thatwas predominately set on the open ocean.

Image credits: Lorem ipsum

The challenge
Olivier Jean, VP Supervisor at Disguiseunderstood the biggest challenge of all - toensure that the change in ﬁlming location andteam added value to the production, yet still
kept the show consistent with Season one.
Season two needed to look and feel like thebreakthrough run of episodes that fans alreadyloved.
Adding to the challenge was a very short pre-production
period. Jean’s team were already deep in pre-production on
Time Bandits, another Waititi-produced show, when they
began talks around working on Our Flag Means Death. There
were only 60 days between those early conversations to thestart of the shoot itself. Jean and his team needed to develop
and test the VP workﬂow, undertake system design, and build
a content pipeline. In Fact we had just less than 2 weeks on-set
to tune the system, do calibrations and stress test our pipeline.
Leveraging Disguise hardware really allowed us to feel
conﬁdent about what we could expect from the system.

The solution
Disguise’s services team was key to delivering the quality
and eﬃciency that would allow a smooth-running VP
solution. From the very start of the production team’s talks
with Disguise there was a heavy focus on various
workﬂows and their beneﬁts.
Top of the list was developing a solid and responsive 2.5D content system capableof handling content resolutions of up to 16K x 8K and output 8x4K streams ofvideo in perfect sync, whilst also working in 2.5D to allow for accurate camera
based projection. Overall, the LED volume was about 420 sq m or 4500 sq ft, andconsisted of 1673 Roe BP2 panels. It was 45m in linear length, up to 10.5m high.
NEP Sweetwater delivered the LED panels and processing and power
infrastructure whilst also doing a perfect build of this volume in less than a week.
Despite numerous hours spent in Pre-Viz, It was impressive seeing the build cometo life in the studio.
The curved screen that stretched behind the actors and provided the projectedbackdrop acted as a focal point for the team’s work. The ﬂexibility of the Disguise
platform allowed experimentation until every aspect was perfect. A hybrid 2.5D
workﬂow was developed to allow re-projecting the content from the camera
perspective, whilst also using the camera tracking info to accurately represent theocean, the horizon line and the sky. This workﬂow ensured that the horizon
appeared ﬂat. The team could then dial-in any “sea state” by sifting the content inrelationship to the camera to simulate the natural sway one would observe at sea.
Having camera tracking and this workﬂow allowed the team to quickly setup two or
three camera frustums as and when the scene required it. Overall, the team madeextensive use out of frustum content from an interactive light perspective andworked with the gaﬀer to help with the overall illumination on-set.

“We also had to become weather enthusiasts,” says Jean, “learning about how to
use clouds in storytelling so that we could convey the journey of the charactersthrough their movement.”
So important were realistic clouds to the production that the production team helda weekly ‘cloud appreciation hour’ to help them consider how the sky should
appear in backgrounds during ﬁlming. The team then built a database of clouds,
skies and 3D oceans that could be used interchangeably within the Disguise
workﬂow. They could quickly adapt the set to whatever they felt was needed forthe day’s shooting.

Results
The Disguise team were able to bring the show
to life with exciting content delivered on stage.
“We provided quick turnarounds of content in preview. There
was no delay between seeing the content for the ﬁrst time anddelivering it on the LED. Our ethos of teamwork meant we wereable to deliver a successful show in record time” says Jean.
Our Flag Means Death found a far more eﬃcient way to shoottheir nautical misadventures without the need to develop sturdy
sea legs. The result was a show that the entire crew could be
proud of. Though the production had shifted hemispheres andexperimented with a new approach to water shoots, they
delivered a second season that felt akin to the ﬁrst - and waseven more critically acclaimed.

"Olivier and the team at
Disguise were invaluable toOur Flag Means Death season
2. Their virtual production
technology and expertise
brought tremendous value andscope to our story. The show
would not have worked
without them. The Revenge
would never have left theharbor to sail the seven seas."David Van Dyke
VFX Supervisor

Services used
Disguise’s Creative Services team enabled thesuccessful delivery of the production throughtheir Virtual Production Services
These included the following:
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VP Supervision
Technical Direction & DesignPreviz & Techviz
Technical operation
Volume Control
Disguise Operator
On-Set Digital Continuity
Selected Scene VP VFX work
Content & Colour PipelineCredits
Virtual Production Supervisor: Olivier Jean
Technical Director: Delainy kennedy
Disguise Operator: Laura BellJnr Operator & Digital Continuity: TerriToxward-Nicolson
Coordinator: Gemma Campbell
VFX Supervisor: David Van Dyke
Gaﬀer: Sean O’Neill
LED Engineer: Steven Kozakowski
Tracking Engineer: Ross Mckay
LED Supplier: NEP Sweetwater
Disguise Server: Xytech X3XR

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