Venom: Let There Be Carnage Filming Locations – Finding San Francisco in London
Director: Andy Serkis
Production Designer: Oliver Scholl
Studio: Sony / Marvel
Starring: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams & Woody Harrelson
Locations: London, UK & San Francisco
Location Brief: Present-day San Francisco locations in London and across the UK, with a comic-book feel
Scouting London and the UK for Venom: Let There Be Carnage
One of the great location challenges on Venom: Let There Be Carnage was finding present-day San Francisco in London and across the UK. These Venom: Let There Be Carnage filming locations needed to work both as convincing doubles and as part of the film’s heightened comic-book world.
Working with Production Designer Oliver Scholl and Director Andy Serkis, the brief was to find locations that could convincingly double for San Francisco while still fitting the heightened comic-book world of Venom.
That meant looking beyond the obvious. Architecture, street layouts, road widths, building scale and background detail all had to work, while allowing for the practical demands of a major action film and the considerable VFX work that would follow.
Finding San Francisco in London
London has doubled for cities all over the world, but San Francisco presents its own particular challenges.
Its hills, architecture and distinctive streets are instantly recognisable. The job wasn’t simply to find somewhere that looked American. We needed locations with enough of the right visual ingredients for Oliver and the design and VFX teams to build on.
Across London and the UK, we scouted locations that could become part of the film’s San Francisco world — always looking at what was physically there, what could be dressed and what could ultimately be extended or transformed through VFX.
That’s one of the things I enjoy most about location scouting. You aren’t necessarily searching for the finished frame. Sometimes you’re finding the foundations of it.
Working with Oliver Scholl and Andy Serkis
It was great working with Production Designer Oliver Scholl, whose approach combined large-scale practical filmmaking with the digital world needed for a film like Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
Andy Serkis brought a very character-led approach to the film. For all the action and chaos, the relationship between Eddie Brock and Venom remained at the centre of the story — a very strange odd couple trying, and frequently failing, to coexist.
From a location point of view, our job was to help give that world a believable physical base before Venom, Carnage and a considerable amount of destruction arrived.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage Location Scouting
Looking back, Venom: Let There Be Carnage was another brilliant example of how London and the UK can double for locations far beyond Britain.
Finding San Francisco on this side of the Atlantic was a great brief and exactly the sort of location challenge I enjoy — taking a very specific visual world and working out where, with the help of production design and VFX, it can actually be filmed.
Below is a selection of my original location scout photographs for Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
