High tech on the high seas

DQ travels to Rome to meet stars Can Yaman and Alanah Bloor plus the creative team behind Sandokan and find out how skilled craftmanship and state-of-the-art technology have been merged for this ambitious retelling of Emilio Salgari’s classic pirate saga.

From the bows of the decorative, dragon-headed pirate ship, the view is serene. Calm blue waters shimmer under the bright, clear sky, with not a soul to be seen in any direction.

Yet not everything in this scene from Sandokan, a new international adaptation of Emilio Salgari’s historical saga, is as it seems. For one thing, wind machines are being used to billow the blood orange sails, while the ornate wooden ship is strangely still under the illumination of studio lights. As members of the cast gather on the deck, crew hustle all around with camera equipment and props, while one person is responsible for soaking the sides of the vessel with water from a nearby paddling pool.

In fact, when DQ visits the set of Sandokan in July 2024, we’re not at sea at all, but in a studio in Formello, 30 kilometres north of Rome. Here, a vast LED virtual production wall – known as a volume – has been erected around the ship, displaying a computer-generated ocean in every direction.

“To practically film on a ship, of course, is not easy,” series director Jan Maria Michelini (Devils) tells DQ during a break from shooting. “Imagine having to act and also to deal with the sails and stuff. We were almost shooting with a 19th century ship from the Italian navy, but then the dates didn’t work. So I was sad not using a practical boat, but thank God I can shoot with moonlight in the background for two or three hours, or extend the sunset for 12 hours.”

Almost 50 years after Salgari’s literary pirate story was first adapted for television, alongside numerous film versions, Turkish superstar Can Yaman takes the lead role in this new dramatisation following the origins of the titular Tiger of Malaya.

Brimming with adventure, passion, revolution and a love of nature, the series recounts Sandokan’s rise from simple adventurer to pirate prince. With the story set in Borneo, a tropical paradise inhabited by native Dayak tribes but ruled by the ruthless colonial British, Sandokan at first is a pirate who fights only for himself and his crew.

During a raid, his life changes forever when he meets Marianne, the beautiful daughter of the British consul in Labuan. But their impossible love affair comes under attack from legendary pirate hunter Lord James Brooke, who will stop at nothing to capture Sandokan and win Marianne’s heart.

Sandokan will also come to discover his role in a larger story – that of the Dayaks’ struggle for freedom and the preservation of the environment, and that he could become the leader to save them.

Produced by Italy’s Lux Vide, the series was created by Luca Bernabei and developed for television by Alessandro Sermoneta (Devils), Scott Rosenbaum (The Shield) and Davide Lantieri (Monterossi). Alessandro Sermoneta is the head writer. Fremantle is handling international distribution and will launch the series to global buyers at its London TV Screenings event on February 28 ahead of its premiere on Italy’s Rai and Mediaset España later this year.

Inside the T7 theatre at the Formello studios, Sandokan’s ship and that belonging to Brooke are two of three vessels that have been built on a stage surrounded by the horseshoe-shaped LED wall. It took six months to build, using 1,152 video panels, and measures 70 metres long and 4.5 metres high to create a giant projection screen approximately 300 metres squared.

It was also built one metre off the ground to allow the cameras to capture plenty of ‘sky’ without the studio roof bleeding into the shot.

When lead director Michelini calls action – “OK, rock ‘n’ roll” – Yaman is holding court on the deck surrounded by his crewmates, with the kidnapped Marianne (Alanah Bloor) watching on. The CGI ocean in the background plays on an infinite loop, with VFX supervisor Stefano Leoni and his team able to call upon any one of 60 combinations of sea and sky in an instant. That footage alone took four months to prepare.

Their work also involves wide shots of Sandokan’s ship entering different locations, which are composites of minimised models of the ships set against real footage of places including Thailand and Reunion Island. A CGI tiger, made up from scans of the real animal, is expected to appear in episode one, while Sandokan also fights a cobra.

Effects are also used to extend real locations, such as the Labuan royalist port that has been shot in Calabria. But where possible, practical props are used in tandem with the visual effects wizardry on display.

All the costumes have been created with a blend of traditional and modern styles. The pirates have been dressed in a notably post-apocalyptic fashion. Furthermore, all the clothing has been handcrafted using recycled materials, in keeping with the environmental themes in the story – a challenge set by Michelini, who directs with Nicola Abbatangelo, for the costume team.

The scale of the production is hugely impressive, and it has been worth the wait for Yaman, who originally signed up to the project five years ago and then moved to Italy from Istanbul for the role, only to see production delayed several times in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

“I always had this hunch, this feeling, that Sandokan was going to happen someday,” he says. “I kept the faith. On days when they said they were going to do it, I didn’t believe it. I just said, ‘Come on, guys, you’re shitting me.’ It was like a joke between us. Then they made me understand they were really serious about it and I really got excited.”

During his downtime, Yaman starred in two seasons of Lux Vide’s Italian series Viola come il mare, and also travelled to Hungary to film El Turco. He portrayed an Ottoman warrior in the latter, which helped him hone the horse-riding and combat skills he would also need for Sandokan.

But to play the pirate, he still had to undergo an intense physical training regime that demanded he lose 10kg in weight – a feat he achieved in just 30 days. “I had this solider training me three times a day with intermittent fasting,” the actor says. “I was 102kg for El Turco. Now, for Sandokan, I am 88kg. It was a crazy period.”

El Turco also marked Yaman’s first English-language series, which meant that when he came to film Sandokan in English, “I was calmer, I had more serenity,” he says. Dialect coach Denise McNee also supported him on set.

“I was worrying a lot about my voice, how I was supposed to be, and she really calmed me down about it and just said that I had to be clear; that I shouldn’t be worrying about my accent, if it was supposed to be British or American, as long as it was clear. At the end of the day, Sandokan is a pirate. He can pick up words from all over the world.

“My directors were so kind. They actually came to my house every week, two days a week and we started reading first eight episodes in Italian. We were discussing line by line how it would be interpreted. So I had this opportunity to go through everything with them in Italian. Once we were done in Italian, I studied all eight episodes in English. So bit by bit, by talking to Denise, thanks to her, I loosened up.”

Coming to the end of the shoot – DQ is watching filming on Day 70 – Yaman describes making Sandokan as an “overwhelming” experience, but a gratifying one as well. “It’s very challenging,” he says. “But we have a masterpiece here, so it’s very satisfying for us also. There’s a lot of fatigue, a lot of bruises. You live like an athlete – you don’t go out, you don’t have fun, you don’t drink. You just focus and commit to this thing, and it’s a serious thing. The production has been a family for me for four years.”

Sandokan was also a landmark project for British actor Bloor, who makes her screen debut in the series. In fact, the project marked her first taped audition, first recall and first in-person audition out of drama school. “It’s been a bit of a dream, to be honest,” she says. “Living in Italy for four months and filming a period drama, which is something that I just grew up loving, it’s kind of a dream.”

Speaking almost a year to the day since she graduated, Bloor says the “whirlwind” of joining Sandokan didn’t feel real until she went for her first costume fitting. Since then, she’s filmed on location in Calabria and become accustomed to performing in front of the LED wall.

“It’s just incredible. You go on the ship and, because of the screens, it really does feel like you’re moving,” she says. “So when you first get up there, you do feel a little bit seasick. It’s been a bit of a baptism by fire because this is my first job and it’s so huge. It’s taken a lot but I’m soaking it all up as much as I can. I’ve learnt so much just from watching other actors and how the directors work. it’s been amazing, a real privilege.”

Marianne, she explains, is a young woman longing to be free from the shackles of her role in Victorian society. It’s not until she’s swept away by Sandokan that she starts to really learn about herself and the world.

“It is really magical to play a character who’s longing for something, and she doesn’t know quite what that is yet,” she says. “I really loved shooting Marianne’s birthday party. That was down in Calabria, and they built the whole consulate villa from scratch. We had loads of extras and we’d taken dance lessons before, so we did a full waltz routine and it just really magical, because it’s the first moment you see that there’s a spark between Sandokan and Marianne, but then there’s Brooke as well. It’s a very poignant moment in the story.”

Yaman and Bloor head an international cast that also includes Ed Westwick as Lord James Brooke, plus Alessandro Preziosi, John Hannah, Madeleine Price, Gilberto Gliozzi, Mark Grosy and Samuele Segreto.

“It’s a very challenging show – it’s a pirate show, shooting in Italy, set in Malaysia and Reunion,” Michelini says. “We built 2,000 square metres of jungle here on the backlot; it’s a huge set. Prep was the key. I like to prep and know exactly what I have to do, and then I like to forget the prep and live in the moment. I want to be surprised.”

Michelini hopes families around the world will soon gather together to watch the adventures of Sandokan, which he compares to “classic” movies like Indiana Jones, The Mummy and, of course, Pirates of the Caribbean.

“The thing with this show is there’s never one scene similar to the other, so every day [on set] is a huge day,” he adds. “It’s very stressful. It has been really challenging. But everybody is aware that we’re doing something special.”

tagged in: Alanah Bloor, Alessandro Sermoneta, Can Yaman, Fremantle, Jan Maria Michelini, Luca Bernabei, Lux Vide, Mediaset Espana, Monica Sarracchini, Rai, Sandokan