Perhaps surprisingly for a film that tells the story of a robot with a human appearance, one that required a lot of continuous VFX presence whenever Ava was featured on screen, Ex Machina was shot without ever using a green screen.
"The practical reason was that, because Ex Machina was shot in such a short period of time (six weeks), we were shooting between 15 and 25 set-ups every day," Whitehurst says.
"Perhaps, in as much as we should have a concern about any entity with intelligence and agency," he replies. "I am far more worried about human intelligence though, or rather the lack of it. I think people are far more dangerous than machines."
However, in terms of technologies being developed for storytelling, he's excited for the possibilities of VR.
"VR is a medium that we, as a culture, don't really understand yet. We don't know how, or even if, it should be a storytelling medium," he says.
"The first time you try VR that works and you get the sense of presence, of being somewhere other than your physical location, is tremendously powerful. To me, this is the most exciting area of technology-driven visual art."