The movie was filmed in Moscow with GoPro cameras, the kind often put on a helmet or a backpack to record extreme sports. Here, the filmmakers wanted the camera closer to face level to better simulate the experience of being the character. The team built a camera rig that stuntmen wore on their heads and that magnetically stabilized the lens, creating steadier shots. In tight quarters, the camera was attached to a performer’s mouthpiece.

Point-of-view stunts are complicated, and scenes can’t always be done in one clean take. The film often handles this with multiple edits; some moments needed smoothing out with the help of visual effects. The filmmakers used roughly a dozen visual effects companies. The company Zero VFX applied crucial effects to a high-octane motorcycle chase in which Henry and his sidekick, Jimmy (Sharlto Copley), shoot up the back of a van, then take a motorcycle through it and out the front window.

“What we were given was almost 40 different shots they had choreographed on set,” Brian Drewes, a Zero VFX founder, said via Skype. “Our main task was not only to make all the explosions, and the shells coming off of the gun, but to make it into one continuous, uninterrupted sequence.”