The film contains 117 visual effects shots, all of which are designed to be "invisible". When the Visual Effects Supervisor, Kwesi Collisson, solicited bids from VFX houses, he received an initial estimated VFX budget of over $1 million, followed by a $400,000 "low budget" estimate. Mr. Collisson decided to execute all of the effects himself, spending four months using Adobe After Effects and Shake software to complete the necessary shots.
Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter shot 82 pages of dialogue in only 12 days of principal photography.
3 apparent B-roll shots of the supporting characters in a ballroom full of dancers were actually created using visual effects. When the Line Producer asked the Director the minimum number of extras needed for these shots during principal photography, the Director requested 50 extras. When only 7 extras showed up on the ballroom shoot days, an alternate solution became necessary. The Visual Effects Supervisor found takes which included empty sections of the ballroom. Taking several high resolution stills from those takes, he created 3 background plates. During a day of additional photography, both the supporting characters who would appear in the foreground and pairs of dancers who would appear in the middle ground were shot against a greenscreen. The Visual Effects Supervisor then composited up to a dozen elements to create shots which appear to contain the bride, her bridesmaids and the young man and young woman characters in the midst of a ballroom full of dancing couples.
For the sex scene, the director asked the actors to stay in bed while the crew quickly changed camera positions to get all of the coverage. The entire scene, including 10 camera setups and a complex dolly shot, was completed in 45 minutes.
A potential continuity error was fixed with visual effects. Due to the short shooting schedule and lack of control of the sound stage, the soles of the actors' bare feet became soiled while shooting on the hotel room set. Shots captured included views of the actors' dirty feet as they got into and out of a clean bed, which would be unlikely in a carpeted hotel room. An error that was not caught by the Script Supervisor on set. During post production, the Director/Editor discovered that 5 shots included in the final edit would include dirty soles. In order to address the problem, the visual effects supervisor rotoscoped the bottom of the actors' feet to delineate the parts of the frame that needed to be replaced. Since shooting replacement soles against green screen in the precise size and angles necessary to fill the rotoscoped sections would be cost prohibitive, the digital compositor searched the Internet for replacement feet photographs. He discovered that the best and highest resolution images of feet were on foot fetish websites. Thus the replacement feet in those five shots are "pornographic feet".