A NIGHTMARISH shark-infested thriller is the first Hollywood-backed film to have every single visual effects shot made in Bournemouth.

47 Metres Down stars Mandy Moore and Claire Holt as two holiday-makers in Mexico who go cage-diving.

After the cage cable brakes, they find themselves trapped on the seabed with less than an hour of oxygen in their tanks as great white sharks circle.

The hundreds of effects shots – which involved CGI sharks and realistic underwater environments – were produced at Outpost VFX on Richmond Hill, Bournemouth.

Outpost VFX managing director Danny Duke said: “There were 426 visual effect shots, many of which went above and beyond the original brief. Everything under the water has some degree of work from us.”

The film, which also features Matthew Modine, was financed from Hollywood but mainly shot in a water tank in Basildon. It was made for around 5 million US dollars, with Outpost VFX taking a stake in the production, and has already made a reported 41.5m dollars at the box office.

On set, director Johannes Roberts thrust a plastic shark’s head on a stick towards the actors, which was replaced with CGI creations by the animators in Bournemouth. Around 30-40 staff at Outpost VFX worked on the film, including on-set visual effects supervisor Sean Mathieson and digital visual effects supervisor Marcin Kolendo. The work led a move to bigger premises for Outpost VFX, which had been based in crowded offices at Horseshoe Common.

Mr Duke said he first read the script at the old offices. “It was a bit of a prison and I was working pretty late one night and I was reading that script. Despite having grown up on the coast, I’m not a big fan of not being able to see the bottom.

“I was reading this script about sharks and thinking, this is totally not for me. From that script, it looked like it was going to be a pretty big impact.”

He said the finished film lived up to the promise of the script, while Outpost’s work had attracted praise from visual effects designers on some major American films.

“It’s amazing to have that level of belief and creative positivity around it all,” he added.

The work on the film has already helped Outpost win contracts for some major productions.

“We’ve used that work in the meantime to gain the momentum to do other projects and thinks such as Nocturnal Animals, Jason Bourne and Life,” said Mr Duke.

He said the film could be a big boost to Bournemouth and the animators coming from its two universities.

“So many people here are graduates of Bournemouth University or Arts University Bournemouth – or both, in my case. To be able to take that student economy and turn it into an industry economy is a great thing,” he said.

“We’re here to keep graduates in the town and not see them go off to London or New Zealand or Canada which is normal with animation films,” he added.

47 Metres Down is at the Odeon Bournemouth tonight and at Cineworld, Poole, until next Wednesday, August 2.