One of the most talked-about scenes in a movie this year involves a symphony of sickness in Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness.”

For director of photography Fredrik Wenzel and production designer Josefin Åsberg, the planning for such a complex scene began two years before principal photography.

The film’s second act takes place aboard a luxury yacht, culminating with the Captain’s Dinner. Ill-timed with a raging storm that violently rocks the boat, the dinner causes nearly everyone on board to succumb to seasickness, namely projectile vomiting. It begins slowly at first, but the increasingly chaotic scene spans 15 minutes and ends in a swirl of vomit, diarrhea and raw sewage.

Wenzel recalls, “The first time the three of us spoke about it, we actually went to the SFX company’s warehouse where they had built a small rocking gimbal for a smaller set.” To understand the physics required for the scene,...