The Running Man: Andrew Whitehurst – Production VFX Supervisor – ILM

Back in 2024, Andrew Whitehurst took us behind the scenes of the visual effects on Blitz. He now returns to discuss his latest collaboration with director Edgar Wright: The Running Man.

This is your second collaboration with Edgar Wright but your first time as his VFX Supervisor. How did this new dynamic influence your creative relationship and the overall VFX strategy for The Running Man?

One of the big advantages of working with someone a second time is that there isn’t the “getting to know you stage” that always has to happen with someone new. All film creatives are very different people who work in different ways, so the learning process is vital and can take time. Because Edgar and a lot of his long-time collaborators had worked with me before, we could really hit the ground running straight away. That was pretty crucial because there was a lot of work to consider, and we knew that the post schedule would be short, so we had to make a lot of decisions early on in production.

What were your earliest conversations with Edgar about the film’s visual identity, especially its depiction of a totalitarian future?

When Edgar and I first met, Marcus Rowland, who has designed all of Edgar’s other films, was also there alongside the concept designer, Oscar Wright. They had a mood book of industrial design and architectural reference, plus maybe two or three pieces of initial mood concept art. I usually make a drawing, painting or sculpture after reading a script to spend some time thinking about the visuals, so I can have some thoughts and questions, and there can be something from me for everyone to react to.

With all these images on the table, the opening conversation was all about the look of the film. The overarching design philosophy was “cassette futurism”; the idea that the film is set in a version of 2025 that branched from our timeline in about 1985, and where a lot of the design motifs from that era were retained. That was a really helpful lodestar because it guided us on how to integrate more modern tech (like cell phones) into a mostly analogue world.

The other idea that Edgar was keen to pursue was that although the affluent areas were materially better made, they should look corporate and visually bland, with only the less rich areas having much colour, where people have painted their neighbourhoods to add some joy. The Montreal subway was great reference for this, as much of it is an amazing piece of brutalist architecture with brightly coloured accents throughout.

How was the VFX work divided among the different studios, and what criteria guided your choice of partners for this film?

ILM was the largest vendor on the show, but we knew that we would have an in-house team and a second vendor. Sona Pak, the show’s amazing VFX Producer, and I had to figure out how best to parcel up the work so that we were sharing as few shots or assets as possible between vendors, and that everyone had work that suited their crews.

In the end, the heavier sequences went to ILM, and Rodeo FX took on some smaller but challenging sequences, such as the car chase in Boston, Elton’s house interiors, and Laughlin’s demise in Las Vegas, amongst others. Scenes such as those in the luxury jet at the end had so much animation, simulation, environment, and compositing work that it had to be ILM.

As it became clearer how much graphics work was going to be required from VFX, we also added Untold Studios as a third vendor to handle the design of graphic elements and The Apostle sequences, which were super dense mash-ups of motion graphics, VFX, and graphic design.

How did you approach designing the futuristic cities, and what references or visual rules guided the look of this oppressive world?

Co-Op City, where the film opens, is fictional, but it is supposed to be an industrial city in the US North East, so Pittsburgh or a similar city was a good place to start. We also knew from the script that the city was divided between Uptown, which was affluent and modern, with a lot of steel and glass, and Slumside, which was more run-down and built from concrete with some older brick structures holding on. As the locations department began to book practical locations in Glasgow, London, and Sofia, we were able to work with the Art Department to create concept art on top of photos from the location scouts so we could see how we were going to turn the location into our world, and how we could make all these disparate locations have a unified design language. We also designed custom road markings, street lights, pedestrian crossings, and traffic lights for the Running Man. It was these quotidian objects that really made the world feel different to our own, but also real.

The film features brutal, televised games. How did the VFX team contribute to building the arena environments and enhancing the spectacle of these lethal competitions?

The TV show sets were built on stages at Leavesden Studios. As much as possible was practical, including the panoramic LED walls at the back of the stage, which had custom content designed for them to be played back live. VFX occasionally had to replace the screen content when either it hadn’t been shot yet, when the TV show segments were filmed, or because continuity changed in the edit. The front set of audience seats were practical, and we had enough crowd extras to fill about half the seats, so we moved them around during the day to make the seats seem as occupied as possible, with VFX adding sprite crowds to fill the gaps. The upper balcony areas of the Running Man set, plus the audience seated there, were entirely VFX. For Speed the Wheel, VFX had to paint out stunt rigging for the performers who were running on the wheel, which was a practical piece built by SFX.

What were the main challenges in integrating VFX into the numerous fight sequences while keeping Edgar Wright’s signature kinetic style intact?

Wherever possible in the film, Edgar wanted to use practical squibs and stunts, so there was a lot of cleaning up rigging cables, some healing and revealing of wounds, and clean up of squib packs. We also added some extra CG gore and gore elements that we photographed with the SFX team. Often the VFX gore would become needed as the edit evolved and led to new continuity requirements.

The movie includes small, round drones. Can you walk us through the design, animation, and behavior development of these drones?

The Rovers were designed by the art department, who also built practical small and medium-sized versions that we used as lighting reference on set. The Rovers are supposed to be pretty ubiquitous within the world of the Running Man, so we knew that they would feature throughout the movie. They were a tricky animation challenge because they are in so many shots, they have to move as they are supposed to be filming the action, but they are very rarely the actual subject of the shot.

It was important that they weren’t too attention-grabbing whilst still acting as a reminder to the audience of the omnipresence of The Network. I asked the animators to think of the Steadicam operators you see covering on-field angles for sports broadcasts. As an audience, you sort of see them in the other camera angles, but they are skilled at being discreet. That was what we needed the Rovers to do, and the animators at ILM and Rodeo really got that.

Additionally, we did want them to have a bit of character and to have some comic timing about how they might fly, or when they might choose to refocus, so there was a conscious effort to add a bit of personality to them or where we could inject a bit of humour, and it was appropriate, we tried to.

Explosions and large-scale destruction seem to play a major role in the film’s action. How did you balance practical effects and CG to achieve the right level of intensity and realism?

The goal was to use practical explosions wherever we could, and Steve Warner’s SFX crew was amazing throughout the show. We also knew that there were some things that SFX wouldn’t be able to do for time, safety, or budgetary reasons, so VFX were able to take over there. We would often add extra debris or bits of additional CG pyro to the real explosions to help hide rigging or other filmmaking paraphernalia. We shot a day of SFX elements so we also had a library of practical squib hits, etc., filmed against green, that we could add into shots that needed more. Where we were required to do fully CG explosions, we referred to the practical pyro as a guide, because Steve had set the style for the film.

The story culminates in a sequence set inside a futuristic jet. What were the specific VFX challenges involved in creating and staging this finale?

The Flying V sequence was incredibly challenging logistically. First, you have a series of complicated fights in confined spaces with all of the stunt rigging that entails. Secondly, there are in the film, three mini-Rovers flying around filming the fight as well as the main “cinema camera”, and the material that the Rovers shoot ends up being broadcast and appearing on every seat back TV and bulkhead screen on the plane! To film the sequence for every take we tried, to have a small DJI Ronin camera on a pole, also covering the action, which we angled to get into positions that the Rovers could be.

In post as the main cut evolved we made selects of which pieces of Ronin footage we could use to put on the screens. Then we started to plot the continuity movement of the three mini-Rovers so we could make sure that the Rovers were covering the angles we had filmed and were moving between these correctly and unobtrusively. It was unbelievably tricky and ILM did amazing work keeping track of that alongside Ralph Foster, the VFX editor.

In addition to all this, we also had to do face replacements on stunt performers where characters were pulled by parachutes, and we also added CG debris blowing around the cabin once pressure had been lost.

Only the interior of the jet was built practically, so all exterior views, on the ground or in the air, were fully CG. ILM built a beautiful plane model based on George Hull’s design.

How did you handle the interaction between actors, stunt performers, and VFX—especially during complex combat scenes with digital augmentation?

Because the film is so performance driven it was essential that this extended to the action. The fights were done with the leads wherever possible, with stunt performers stepping in where needed. In those instances, we did face replacements for the stunt person. For a couple of shots in the buggy chase when Ben and Elton are escaping, VFX added full digi-doubles inside a CG interior to the buggy because a plexiglas screen had needed to be placed in front of the stunt performers in the car for safety, and that, and everything behind it, needed to be replaced in post.

From prep onwards, VFX worked with Nikki Berwick’s stunt team to make sure that the approach for each shot was carefully thought through, allowing stunts to bring their best and VFX knowing where we would need to step in.

Can you tell us about the workflow and tools that proved essential for world-building, from previs to final shots?

Edgar uses storyboards a lot, so most of the film is storyboarded by a small team of artists, including Oscar Wright, the concept designer. Others will contribute boards where needed. I drew a few to explore the “Ben leaping from the bridge” beat with second unit director, Darrin Prescott, for example.

We did a little previs, but mostly this was a technical exercise, for example, to explore what different speeds driving down an alleyway felt like on different lens sizes, or working out how we could position cameras to cover Ben leaping from one train to another.

We also used concept art a lot, with ILM’s art department contributing many paintings. I also contributed some sketches and some paint overs to try and clarify the creative briefs for the VFX houses or for discussion with Edgar. Any opportunity we had to create a picture to explain or discuss something, we took it, and that could be as simple as a pencil sketch in a notebook, all the way to a full 3D model rendered and composited into location photographs.

Looking back at the entire project, which sequence or element pushed you and your team the furthest creatively, and why?

I don’t think there’s a single sequence that stands out in that regard. What was tricky was maintaining a visually cohesive world across the whole film. The world had to feel real and it had to have grit. That said it also needed to have style and humour. It’s a difficult line to walk because you could easily make something that felt like a pastiche, and it was essential that we stayed grounded.

Everyone in every department got on board with this ethos and because we were all continually making pictures, there was an ever-growing body of work that helped solidify the world’s look and feel. That the future Las Vegas (filmed in the middle of winter in Glasgow), felt in the same world as the Network Tower, filmed at Wembley Stadium in London, was down to everyone pulling in the same direction. That was difficult to do, and the fact that we had a short 25 week post production schedule meant that we had to get things right on pretty much the first try!

How long did you work on this show?

I worked on the film for about 18 months. Prep lasted for 8 months, the shoot was about 6 months and post was about 6 months.

What’s the VFX shots count?

There are about 1700 shots, but many of them have a screen, or multiple screens, within them. Each of those screen contents was usually another VFX shot. Once you account for those, the shot count is much higher.

A big thanks for your time.

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WANT TO KNOW MORE?
ILM: Dedicated page about The Running Man on ILM website.
Rodeo FX: Dedicated page about The Running Man on Rodeo FX website.

© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2025