Chief of War

Chief of War recreates the Hawaiian Islands of the late eighteenth century, a landscape that no longer survives in that form. The production shot the bulk of the series on New Zealand's North Island, using the Bay of Islands to stand in for eighteenth century Hawaii, with additional filming in Hilo, Kalapana and Waianae on the Hawaiian islands themselves. For the Holua sled race, a pivotal sequence, the production needed a mountain that does not exist, so New Zealand studio Cause and FX constructed the route as an entirely digital environment. Within that environment, the sleds moved through volcanic slopes, open grassland and coastal shrub before the riders hit the surf. The only sky visible through the sequence came from a skydome built from drone plates, and digital doubles handled the impacts that live actors could not safely perform. The ocean itself also needed to be extended, with digital water combined with surf footage shot on the New Zealand coast to keep the race's final stretch continuous. Chumak worked as a senior DMP artist on the series.