Theo Demiris launched his career in visual effects in 2014 at One of Us. Over the years, he has contributed to a wide range of productions, including Paddington, Jupiter Ascending, The Crown, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. He later stepped into the role of VFX Supervisor on projects such as Pinocchio, Munich: Edge of War, Blitz, and The Roses.
How did you get involved in this film?
Dan Barrow at Netflix UK put my name forward for the job. A call from producer Guy Heeley followed, and then a meeting with Tom Harper, where we talked through the film in broad strokes. I remember admitting I had never watched the series, to which they replied that this was actually a perk rather than a problem, since the film had to feel different from it.
How was the collaboration with Director Tom Harper?
The collaboration was great. Tom treats VFX properly. On most projects the question I get asked on set is “can you fix this?”, treating VFX as a kind of magic eraser rather than part of the storytelling. Tom’s questions were different from the get-go. They were along the lines of “how can we involve VFX to make this truly great?” This changes everything for us, because it means VFX gets brought in early enough to actually shape decisions, not just clean up after them.
He has a very clear cinematic vision, and what I love is how interested he is in the way visual effects can be organically integrated into the narrative. That meant we spent a lot of time in prep talking through not just the big set pieces but also the smaller moments. He’s also very hands-on. The cockpit shot during the bombing run, for example, that beautifully organic camera move was Tom operating himself. When a director is that engaged with the craft, it raises the bar for everyone.
How did you approach selecting the different VFX studios involved in the project?
Honestly, a lot of it came down to trust and history. VFX Producer Lisa Renney was a great collaborator throughout, fully on board with leaning on people we knew and trusted. Our two main vendors were One of Us Paris and MagicLab in Prague. I go way back with both of them. We all collaborated on the first project I ever supervised, Matteo Garrone’s underrated Pinocchio film (2019). One of Us London is also where I started my career and worked my way up through the VFX ranks.
Special shoutout to our in-house team, the incredible duo called House of Good Vibes. They came recommended by Netflix and smashed it out of the park working on all our temps and finalling a lot of shots for us.
The film is set in 1940. How did you approach the overall VFX strategy for recreating Birmingham and Liverpool during that period?
The world of Peaky Blinders isn’t quite the “real” world. Everything is slightly heightened, the music is modern and cool, the characters are larger than life, and Steven Knight’s dialogue has that same quality. It’s a bit like a graphic novel, though not quite. But for the film, we wanted to take a small step back from that. We wanted it to feel bigger and slightly more naturalistic. It had to be both historically accurate and a natural, albeit wider in scope, continuation of the tone established by the series.
For the environments, this meant working closely with production designer Jacqueline Abrahams and location manager Richard Hill from early in pre-production, and doing quick concept work on top of potential locations and set builds. Both were incredibly open and great collaborators. George Steel shot parts of it on 35mm and then used this as a grading reference for the rest of the film. We then transferred everything shot digitally onto a similar stock in post. This gave all of our CG work a very tangible feel, appropriate to the period and the material.
In general, the VFX strategy followed that principle: rooted in reality first. A hell of a lot of research to begin with, then bringing forward the parts of those references that felt in-line with the tone of the film and the story.
What were the main challenges in reconstructing historically accurate versions of Birmingham and Liverpool, and how closely did you collaborate with the production designer and historical references?
The challenge, as always in these cases, is finding the right balance between historical accuracy and the necessary storytelling beats. Not only to make them feel like real places but to convey a sense of war and destruction happening all around the story.
The collaboration was close. A lot of joint recces to find the right places. While scouting I made a habit of collecting books from local museums. They often had material on the various places and how they had changed over the years. That gave us a base level of realism that fed directly into the concepts.
Knowing the main beats of the story, we designed the environments and created concepts using those different locations early in pre-production. In the case of the BSA factory, for example, we had concepted multiple angles in both pre-destruction and post-destruction versions. We even adapted our storyboards to reflect the CG environments that would be added later.
Can you walk us through the balance between practical sets, location shooting, and digital environment extensions for these cities?
Most of the film was shot on location, which I think is a big part of why the film feels different from the series. In fact, only the interior of the Garrison Pub was an entire practical set. The trade-off, of course, is that shooting almost everything on location means you’re constantly adapting real places to fit the story. That’s where VFX comes in, mostly to combine and extend.
The Waterloo Docks sequence is a good example of this. The exterior of the docks was put together by combining three different locations, along with some full CG shots. Our job was to bring all of that together into one coherent landscape. We prioritised finding a location that gave us enough real water to shoot the canal boats, which meant pretty much everything around them had to be added later. The entire landscape in every direction around the docks was created in VFX.
How did you approach transforming these environments from intact cities into heavily bombed, war-torn landscapes?
It’s all about destruction that makes sense. Thinking about the structural points of buildings, the inner details, dressing the correct type of rubble in the right places, having the right materials, thinking of the environment even outside the contours of the frame, etc. A combination of looking at references and common sense, I guess.
Sometimes adding the odd detail helps, something unexpected that shouldn’t be there, like a single shoe within the debris or a bike wheel that keeps on spinning. It adds to the reality. Things are rarely the way we imagine them to be. They are more complex, chaotic, unpredictable, and sometimes surprising.
What kind of asset build and pipeline did you develop to handle both “clean” and “destroyed” versions of the same locations?
We started with LIDAR scans of the locations to build accurate digital versions of the intact buildings, then created destroyed replicas from there. Where a building was period-correct, we kept its style and just swapped it for a damaged version. Where it was modern, we had more freedom and could go bigger with the destruction.
For larger environments, we developed some procedural workflows to dress destruction across wider areas more efficiently. We almost always tried to preserve the underlying urban design itself, the width of the roads where appropriate, the elevation of the landscape, and so on. Those things carry a kind of built-in chaos that you can’t easily fake, and it really adds to the realism.
The film features large-scale bombing sequences — what were the key challenges in designing and executing those explosions?
Large-scale explosions and location work don’t naturally go together. You’re essentially trying to stage something catastrophic in a place you need to leave intact. The bombing of the BSA factory in Small Heath was the clearest example of that.
At the location itself we did a practical explosion as large as we were allowed, filmed it with seven cameras including a drone. Don’t even get me started about all the limitations SFX supervisor Paul Dimmer and his team had to work around, but they delivered a beautiful bang. It gave us the interactive lighting, a good base for the explosion, and a lot of small-scale details that we worked to preserve. The problem with CG is that it only gives you what you already think you want. There are no beautiful accidents, no unpredictability. We then did a dedicated elements shoot at the Shepperton backlot, this time with fewer limitations, which gave us more real elements to play with.
Another crucial part of this was working closely with editorial. Our post viz team, led by Jamie Bakewell, provided our editor Mark Eckersley and Tom with a lot of material to work with: long takes from every possible angle, with various beats of action in them, so we could experiment and converge together on the best version of the sequences.
Even with all of that to work with, we still had to add a lot of CG, both to enhance the main explosions and to create additional ones across the environment. And of course to add any sort of interaction with the buildings and the environment at large, be it collapsing walls, falling debris, black smoke, flying bikes, etc. All of that while trying to preserve parts of the original explosion.
How did you ensure that the explosions felt grounded and realistic within the historical context of World War II?
Lighting is by far the most important component in making a scene like this feel tangible and real. The grounding really comes from that practical-first approach. That gives you the base lighting to build on, and from there it’s a matter of constantly questioning everything and checking against real reference every step of the way, whether it’s footage from the period itself or analogous modern events.
Case in point: halfway through post, an explosion at a fireworks factory in the US gave us a great reference for the wide trailer shot of the main explosion at the munitions factory. We added smaller secondary flashes and puffs within the main body of the explosion as though the ammunition stored in the factory was reacting to the blast. Small unexpected details that you wouldn’t normally expect to see. They’re lost within the context of the overall shot but add to the realism.
Were any specific simulation techniques or tools particularly critical for handling destruction, debris, and atmospheric effects like smoke and dust?
I’d like to say here that not every project requires reinventing the wheel. We’ve been doing similar work for a long time now and we’ve learned how to do it well. Tools and workflows keep changing, maybe now more than ever, but the process comes first. That means combining practical and digital, blocking things early, communicating properly and transparently with the vendors and the studio, and having a director who is willing to participate early on and help you get the best result for the film. Sounds maybe obvious but surprisingly not the case that often.
Can you talk about integrating VFX with stunt work and practical effects during the more intense action sequences?
I love working closely with stunts and SFX. All three departments usually suffer from the same type of criticism. When a stunt feels a little fake, people will say “it looks very stunt-y.” Same goes for “VFX-y” or “SFX-y” work. And in my experience, what those notes really translate to is “too clean,” “too convenient,” “too perfect.”
The trick is finding ways to introduce an unpredictable element back into the equation, and working together to hide each other’s limitations. That means talking through every beat and experimenting until you land on something that feels alive. The closer all three departments work from the start, the easier that gets.
How did lighting and cinematography influence your VFX work, especially when matching CG destruction to live-action plates?
The interesting thing about destruction, especially when you’re filming in real locations, is that it often involves removing parts of the set, walls, even entire buildings. That creates bigger openings, lets a lot more light through, and changes the original plate significantly. So we had to be very careful about where and how we dressed our destruction, in ways that wouldn’t force us to relight the performances later.
That meant working closely with George Steel and locking down where the destruction would land before we shot the scene. We needed to know where the sun would be, how the shadows would fall, and so on. In some cases we even covered parts of the buildings with white silks, essentially turning them into big bounce sources for the areas that we knew we’d be removing in post. We also avoided green screens in favour of more roto work, precisely to avoid contaminating the shots and creating unnecessary shadows. When most of your cast has short hair and wears flat caps… makes things a bit easier.
Were there any invisible VFX shots in the film — particularly in rebuilding or enhancing environments — that audiences might not suspect?
Yes! The one that always surprises people is all the blood in the emotional finale. Everything from the blood on the characters’ clothes and hands to the pools on the floor is entirely digital, carefully art-directed for believability and maximum story impact.
We also had a lot of gun shots including two headshots. A lot of research went into those for them to feel as real as possible. I still regret delving into the dark web to look for real references, by the way. In terms of environments, that would be the Liverpool Docks. There’s a small sequence in the film, when you see the Nazis unloading the counterfeit money crates, that was part of the additional photography, put together from full CG shots and a very limited set piece.
Looking back, is there a specific sequence or shot that best represents the ambition and complexity of the VFX work on Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man?
I’d say the opening sequence with the bombing of the BSA factory. It encapsulates and combines pretty much everything we were aiming for: real locations, a solid practical base for the explosion and fire, good stunt work, and big CG environments and FX that are integrated perfectly and open up the scope. Real and visceral stuff. All working towards the sudden appearance of the Peaky Blinders logo, graphically interacting with the thick smoke coming off a collapsing wall behind it as if from a graphic novel. That’s the balance I was talking about before, between naturalism and a heightened reality in a single sequence, and it’s pivotal in setting the tone for what follows.
How long did you work on the film?
Lisa Renney and I got attached early in prep, in June 2024, and delivered the film in October 2025. So around 16 months.
What’s the VFX shot count?
About 600 shots.
What is your next project?
I’m currently finishing up on Amy Sherman-Palladino’s new film, Eloise.
A big thanks for your time.
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WANT TO KNOW MORE?
One of Us: Dedicated page about Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man on One of Us website.
MagicLab: Dedicated page about Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man on MagicLab website.
© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2026
