I was thinking more along the lines of a single large explosion taking up perhaps 1/8th of the sky. For that to work it really does need an establishing shot of a ship leaving Maz’s castle, then cutting to Finn boarding the transport as the explosion happens, then he turns and sees the debris in the sky, with the star destroyer just entering the frame from the right.
One thing that I didn’t consider was that Finn asks ‘Where’s Rey?’, and in this sequence of events it might imply that Finn feared that she was on the destroyed ship.