There are lots of compelling actions, exciting political machinations and rewarding complicated relationships that drive Apple TV+’s ”War Manager. “The series works in no small part because of how the show’s world is made.
Production designer Jean-François Campeau and his team had to become very creative in examining the complexity of Hawaiian Kingdoms, given how Eurocentric most visual sources are; They had to become very cunning, build sailboats from scratch and work with fiber artists and sculptors from Hawaii to New Zealand to create the right structures for temples and ordinary homes. Campeau designed with the natural world in mind and divorced the Kingdom of Maui, O’Ahu and Hawaii through important geographical functions in each.
Sometimes, though? Sometimes it is important for drama to see the world burning.
That is what has happened in a couple of episodes of the series so far – in section 4, with honorable, banished war manager Ka’iana (Jason Momo) Torch the slave pens in the city of Zamboanga to save his shipmate Tony (James Udom), and again in section 5 with the frustrated Chieftain Keoua (Cliff Curtis) Sorching Hans All-Too-Honorable Rival Kamehameha’s (Kaina Makua) Stores of Food
When it is time to take carefully examined and carefully constructed environments and light them, there are different approaches that a production can take. Sometimes it is as easy to set on fire as to set them on fire. For Keouas Raid at Kamehameha’s shop house, Campeau and his team built them just to burn.
“We both built the ends of it, the front and the back, but the center we had a structure that was very generic – not with the fortress and buzzing (of materials) because it is quite complicated to build these huts. But then, when we set it on fire, the entire length would burn and of course improved by VFX,” said Campeau to IndieWire. “The best way is to put it on.”
Of course, this is not always the best way. The Storehouse fires were a one-time scene like the button for section 5. There was no much to be intercutting or complex action inside them when the fires were lit. Usually, a production wants to make some fires much more controllable, and sets must be built in a way they do not really burn. So was the case for the Zamboanga Escape sequence.
“The interior where Ka’iana gets all the slaves expanded on a stage, and then it was the outside of the layer on the back. So you could – it was like a barbecue, you know? You could put (the fire) on and off and it wouldn’t really burn. They also reinforced the fire for it,” Campeau said.
Zamboanga was a particularly rewarding contrast to entering the series, where so much of Campeau’s work is about showing the vital and intricate Hawaiian civilizations that were on CUSP of European colonization. Campeau designed the slums in the Philippine port to be claustrophobic, with architecture designed to introduce, capture and own.
“You feel that the Spanish presence there in the massive building, but still the Philippines is trying to find their way around this, basically as a visitor in their own territory,” Campeau said. “For Ka’iana to experience this … It gives him a sense of what is coming.”
On the other hand, Ka’iana and the family’s landing site with Kamehameha’s power base in Hawaii, as well as their enemies, needed to be founded in the country, while they still did the work of characterizing the various fractions. “Know the different islands and the different kingdoms, with the production restrictions to have to shoot part in Hawaii and part of New Zealand and mix all them together – there are iconic differences that are easy to use,” Campeau said. “But it was also very character controlled with Kahekili (Temuera Morrison) and O’Ahu. We went for a large landmark per island that created the geopolitical reality in our series.”
With Kamehameha in particular to be defined by lush green planes and cliffs – open, healthy space – the spectacle is to set fire to the storage houses the more shocking, the more a violation. Maybe it’s just some comfort Ka’iana, Kamehameha and friends, like Campeau let them burn, but not all night. “It’s not like we let it burn all the way,” Campeau said. “And we had to dress a bit, of course. Because it never exactly looks like you would imagine.”
The consequences for tempting Kamehameha for war will probably not look exactly what Keoua imagines, and it is part of the fun with the “war manager” as well.
