 Principal photography began on August 31, 2010, in Oxford, England, which included St Aldate's street and some of the University of Oxford's buildings, and lasted for two days. Production then moved to Pinewood Studios in Iver, and to Georgia in October, including Tybee Island, Thunderbolt and Savannah, after sites in Louisiana, North Carolina and West Michigan were considered. Jekyll Island was chosen over Tybee Island after a producer reviewed the locations on Google Earth and thought the water near Jekyll looked more blue. Palm trees were planted into the island's sand so that it would look more like a tropical beach, but the cold weather caused many of the palm trees to become brown or die only days into the shoot, necessitating significant digital color correction from the visual effects team. Additional location shooting took place in Russia. A section of the plot is set in the Argentine coastal city of Villa Gesell, but was filmed in another province of the country with no beach but with mountains instead. Washington, D.C., the Mojave Desert and Fox's soundstages in Los Angeles also served as locations. The Englefield House in Berkshire served as the X-Mansion, and had its interior decoration adapted to resemble the way the mansion looked in the previous films. Both the submarine and the X-Jet were built on hydraulic sets so that they could be rotated for the vehicles'movements. Principal photography ended in December, but additional filming, primarily in California at Los Angeles and Long Beach, continued into April 2011, leaving only three to four weeks for post-production before the film's scheduled premiere in June. The tight schedule to meet the release date led Vaughn to declare that he had "never worked under such time pressure". The film cost approximately $ 160 million to produce without tax breaks, with the eventual cost around $ 140 million.
