Normington could minimally dress the yacht when needed, but most of her changes were to ensure continuity between the real ship and the sets her team built at Shepperton Studios, a film studio built outside of London. The sets included the cabins, the library, the spa, and the main corridor, where essential action takes place.
“We wanted [the yacht] to be a character,” Normington says. “To be dark and menacing and slick with cool tones. The corridor was the link to everything else, and it creates this feeling that you never quite know where you are and who’s where. Everything’s reflective. And then we used red in a certain way at times. It’s all very mannered and very sophisticated.”
Some of the key stunts took place on the actual yacht. In one scene, Laura climbs from her balcony to the adjacent one, losing her shoe in the sea in the process. “There was a stunt woman maybe 15 meters from sea level, climbing over from one balcony to another,” Stone says. “And then we’ve had Keira do it as well with safety mats in the studio. There’s a shot from a boat that was about 100 meters away of the whole sea, and her climbing over.”
Hjørundfjorden, Norway
Prior to filming, the superyacht happened to be in Norway. The owners offered for Stone to come shoot exteriors of it sailing in one of the fjords. “They put on a show for us,” he says. “They didn’t charge us anything for us to follow them around. We didn’t go on the boat. We didn’t shoot in the boat. We chose [the fjord] we thought felt the most impressive and the most oppressive for the story. We sent the captain in that direction, and then we followed with two boats, one which had a drone [crew] and one which had us on it. It’s an extraordinary fjord.”
Glen Affric, Scotland
Although the film features shots of the yacht in Norway, the climatic sequence was shot in Scotland at Glen Affric Estate. “We did the gala there and then used VFX for the background and the mountains,” Normington says. “It was quite remote. You had to get there and stay there, but it was fantastic.”
