Norwegian visual effects studio Rebel Unit has released a new VFX breakdown showcasing how it transformed London’s Fleet Street into a flooded urban landscape for the survival drama The End We Start From. The work combines detailed 3D environment reconstruction, simulated water and digital compositing to bring a climate-disaster scenario to life.
How do you make a familiar London street look as though it has disappeared beneath rising floodwater?
For Rebel Unit, the answer involved rebuilding part of the city digitally and integrating the resulting environment into the film’s live-action footage.
The studio’s newly released breakdown offers a closer look at the visual effects behind The End We Start From, a 2023 film directed by Mahalia Belo and starring Jodie Comer. Set in a near-future Britain devastated by catastrophic flooding, the film follows a mother and her infant as they leave London and attempt to find safety.
Rather than relying on spectacular destruction in every scene, the production uses environmental effects to create a believable world in crisis.
Source: CG Channel — See how Rebel Unit flooded London for The End We Start From
Reconstructing Fleet Street as a Digital Environment
One of the central elements in the breakdown is the recreation of London’s Fleet Street.
Rebel Unit built a full 3D reconstruction of the area, giving the artists control over the architecture and surrounding environment. The digital street could then be transformed into a flooded landscape rather than being limited to the conditions available during location filming.
Reconstructing a real location requires attention to architectural detail, perspective and scale. London’s streets have distinctive building façades and recognizable urban layouts, so a generic collection of buildings would not deliver the same sense of authenticity.
A digital reconstruction provides flexibility for adjusting the environment to suit the camera while maintaining the visual identity of the real location.
It also allows the effects team to create a flooded street that would be difficult to film safely or practically in the real world.
Simulating Floodwater Across the City
The next challenge was integrating water into the reconstructed environment.
Floodwater changes how an entire location appears. It affects reflections, surface detail, visibility and the relationship between buildings and the ground. The water must also look convincing in relation to the surrounding architecture.
For The End We Start From, Rebel Unit combined the reconstructed Fleet Street environment with simulated water to create the appearance of central London submerged by a major flood.
The important factor is integration. A realistic water surface alone is not enough if it looks disconnected from the street, buildings and photographed elements.
The environment and water must work together as a single visual scene, with convincing scale and lighting.
Beyond London: Flooding the Countryside
The breakdown also showcases effects beyond the city.
One particularly striking example involves floodwater forcing its way through a window in an isolated house. The sequence takes the environmental disaster into a more intimate setting, showing how rising water threatens people even after they have left the city.
These rural effects help expand the film’s world without relying exclusively on large digital cityscapes.
They also demonstrate the range of challenges involved in depicting a flood. An exterior environment requires a convincing landscape and water surface, while an interior flooding shot must make the interaction between the water, window and surrounding space feel believable.
Both approaches support the same story: the disaster has reached places that would ordinarily feel safe.
Visual Effects That Support the Story
The End We Start From is a survival drama rather than a conventional effects-driven disaster film. Its visual effects need to communicate the scale of the crisis while keeping the characters’ experiences at the centre of the story.
Rebel Unit’s digital environments help establish the wider consequences of the flooding. The city becomes an increasingly hostile place, while rural locations offer no guarantee of safety.
This restrained approach demonstrates how environmental VFX can create tension without constantly drawing attention to the technology.
The audience needs to believe in the world, not necessarily notice every digital element that helped construct it.
A Recognized Achievement in Film VFX
Rebel Unit handled all the visual effects for The End We Start From. The work earned the studio a nomination for Best Effects at the 2023 British Independent Film Awards.
The project highlights how environment reconstruction, water effects and compositing can work together to transform real locations into convincing disaster settings.
For CG environment artists, FX artists and compositors, the breakdown is a useful look at the process of creating a large-scale environmental event through carefully integrated visual effects.
Watch the Rebel Unit Breakdown
The newly released breakdown showcases the studio’s flooded Fleet Street reconstruction and additional rural effects from the film.
Watch the original material to see how the finished shots compare with the visual effects work behind them.
- Watch the VFX breakdown on Vimeo
- Explore The End We Start From on Rebel Unit’s official website
- Read the CG Channel report
Follow Zgian for more VFX breakdowns, CG environment techniques, simulation workflows and behind-the-scenes insights from film production.
