Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the One Piece anime and manga was an instant hit, amassing great viewership and feedback. It featured the protagonist, Luffy, and his friends going on a journey to discover their goals and find the One Piece treasure. Throughout their journey, they encounter many challenges, and many more to come in the show's second season, which has also already been confirmed.
Netflix’s One Piece has received praise from fans over many different aspects of the show, one of them being its amazing cinematography. The live-action One Piece uses a lot of practicality in its film-making, which gives its world a much more lively feel. This is because the director, Marc Jobst, was against the type of filming that relies on the green screens.
One Piece’s director of photography, Nicole Hirsch Whitaker, explained this in an interview with The Direct. When addressing the lack of green-screen shots in the show, she said that since the show's director “comes from the theatre,” he is “very much against that type of filming.” She mentioned that it was so important to him that the actors appeared in a real environment that he refused to shoot the Gold Roger castle scene inside a parking lot. It was instead shot in a real castle. You can read her entire response below:
"He really felt like it was important for the actors to be in a real environment. Even when we shot [the] Gold Roger [sequence], even though that was a lot of blue screen, he took us to a real location and we shot in a castle so that they were surrounded by the walls and that they felt like they were in a space."
Nicole also said that she thinks working with practical sets instead of relying on green-screen was “the right way to go” for the live-action adaptation of One Piece. She mentioned some of the scenes that looked CGI but were actually fully practical, which included the water scenes and the Windmill Village. "Almost all of the work during the day on the water was practical," Nicole said.
Considering how many industries have become much more reliant on green screens and CGIs, it’s nice to see that a title as huge as Netflix’s One Piece decided to stick to the basics. They actually made an effort to stay grounded to the basic elements, which added to the whole glamour and popularity of the live-action adaptation. This whole attempt at keeping everything grounded in the real world as much as possible ended up being super expensive.
Due to the extremely high production budget of One Piece, the show’s first season was the most expensive series to have ever been developed in the history of Netflix. However, it is safe to say that each and every penny that was spent on the live-action series was money well-spent, considering all the praise and positive reviews it received after its launch.
Season 1 of Netflix’s One Piece is currently available to stream on Netflix.
