Focus Of The Week: Lucia Sciarra

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The opening sequence of Spectre sees Bond on a rogue mission to Mexico City during the Day of the Dead celebrations. Having scaled the rooftops of the city, Bond finds his target and shoots. The mark, Marco Sciarra, escapes as the building explodes around him and a chase between Bond and the criminal ensues eventually ending in Sciarra’s death.

After killing Sciarra, Bond travels to Rome where he meets Lucia (Monica Bellucci), Sciarra’s beautiful widow at his funeral. Bond follows the widow back to her villa, where he saves her life from two assassins, knowing that she holds the secrets to help him with his mission. Lucia instantly distrusts Bond, angry that he has signed her death warrant by killing her husband. Eventually she gives in and tells Bond that the organisation that Sciarra worked for will meet that night to find his replacement. As Bond leaves he makes arrangements for Lucia to find safety with his old friend Felix but she warns him that he is “crossing over to a place where there is no mercy.”

Focus Of The Week: Aston Martin DB5

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No car is more closely identified with 007 than the Aston Martin DB5. It had a production run of only 1,023 cars and was produced between 1963 and 1965 – the DB5’s essential Britishness, bespoke craftsmanship, sleek, classic styling, made it a perfect fit for James Bond.

Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger novel specified that Bond drive a gadget-laden Aston Martin DB Mark III for the chase across Europe. The Mark III was introduced in 1957, the year before Fleming wrote Goldfinger. In preparation for the filming of Goldfinger, production designer Ken Adam and special effects’ John Stears visited Aston Martin Lagonda to make a deal with them for a car. On their visit they fell in love with the DB5 prototype and managed to secure it for the movie.

Production received just one car for the gadgets, no standbys, so it took some incredible work from the special effects team to fit them all into the confined space. John Stears said the first thing he did was make the hole for the ejector seat; “I marked it out, and taped off the roof of this beautiful car. I looked at it, went away and had a cup of coffee, came back, and got the drill, and drilled the hole.” Director Guy Hamilton claimed the revolving number plates were his input, saying wouldn’t it be “absolutely marvellous to collect a parking ticket and then juggle the number plate and drive off.”

Q shows the rest of the gadgets to Bond in his lab and Bond goes on to use many of these throughout the film. He uses the tracking system to follow Goldfinger’s Rolls Royce, the tire scythe to disable Tilly Masterson’s car, the smoke screen and oil slick functions to help him escape Goldfinger’s compound, protects himself with the rear bulletproof screen and ejects a guard riding with him out of the roof.

The DB5 returned in Thunderball, repaired after Bond’s crash in Goldfinger but then didn’t appear for another 30 years until GoldenEye. A version of the iconic car was also featured in Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Casino Royale, Skyfall and Spectre.

You can see 007’s Aston Martin DB5 at Bond in Motion at the London Film Museum. http://londonfilmmuseum.com

Focus Of The Week: Jaws

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The seven foot two inch man mountain with steel teeth first appears in The Spy Who Loved Me as Karl Stromberg’s enforcer. Jaws initially attempts to obtain a microfilm of the plans of Stromberg’s submarine tracking system from Max Kalba in Cairo. After James Bond and Mayor Anya Amasova steal the film, Jaws attacks them on a train but Bond kicks him out of the window. He tries again in Sardinia but is again unsuccessful. Later in Stromberg’s Atlantis base, Bond uses an electromagnet to lift Jaws by his teeth and drop him into a shark tank. Somehow he survives.
In Moonraker, aerospace mogul Hugo Drax, hires Jaws to work for him. Jaws attempts to kill Bond at the Rio Carnival and then again on the cable cars at Sugarloaf Mountain. Jaws crashes at high speed into the control station where having emerged from the rubble he meets Dolly and the pair immediately fall in love.
Jaws travels with Drax to his secret rocket base where he helps with security issues (including chasing Bond over a waterfall). Then with Dolly he travels to Drax’s space station where he realises if Drax succeeds with his plan to repopulate the earth with beautiful people he and Dolly will be eliminated. He switches side and fights Drax’s men to free a Moonraker shuttle so Bond and Holly can escape the exploding space station. When it looks like Jaws and Dolly will die in space, he opens a bottle of champagne and speaks his only words in the two movies, “Well, here’s to us.”

Focus Of The Week: George Lazenby

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George Lazenby’s confidence, striking good looks and charm made him a natural choice to become the successor to Sean Connery as James Bond.

Growing up in Australia, George Lazenby (born 5 September, 1939) always dreamed big. He moved to Canberra in his teens and through perseverance became the leader of a rock ‘n’ roll band and a booker for larger acts coming from Sydney. Lazenby relates this to his performance as 007: “I was basically doing it just to get out there. I didn’t know I wanted to be an entertainer at the time. But, what was in the back of mind, I guess, was to show off, to be somebody. And that’s why, I think, when Bond came up, the odds were I’d get it because I wanted it more than anybody else.”

Lazenby moved to London and lined up a job as a car salesman quickly progressing to selling Mercedes on Park Lane. His looks gained the notice of photographer Chard Jenkins and he quickly became one of the highest paid male models in Europe. After meeting casting director Maggie Abbott, Lazenby was inspired to audition for James Bond and set about turning himself into the perfect candidate. Purchasing a suit that had been made for Sean Connery for You Only Live Twice but wasn’t used, he then went to Connery’s barber at the Dorchester Hotel asking for the Bond actor’s hairstyle not knowing that Bond producer Cubby Broccoli was in the next door chair.

After meeting with co-producer Harry Saltzman, Lazenby confessed to director Peter Hunt that he had no real acting experience. Nevertheless Hunt told him if they stuck together, he could turn him into the new Bond. His physical exuberance and energy secured him the role. Cubby Broccoli said of him: “Lazenby, in my judgement, made a good James Bond, He could have easily fallen into the trap of doing a smart but fatal imitation of Sean. Instead, he fought his corner as a fledgling actor, avoided tricks and gave a surprisingly effective performance.”

A long term commitment to 007 never materialised. Lazenby departed the series after just one memorable performance in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).

Focus Of The Week: Hugo Drax

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Aerospace mogul Hugo Drax plans to launch a deadly gas attack on earth from space to wipe out the human race. He then wants to repopulate it with hand-picked, genetically ideal humans and create an “ultimate dynasty”.
Drax is, as James Bond notes, “obsessed with space.” He has built an aerospace empire in Southern California, including a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility for the Moonraker, a space shuttle created ostensibly for NASA. Drax has also launched a personally funded training program for a new astronaut corps, reputedly to man the Moonraker fleet. In fact, he has built the shuttles and trained the astronauts to help him carry out his master plan.
With a taste for the finer things, Drax lives in a French chateau brought stone by stone to California. It is here that Bond meets Drax and survives an attempted assignation attempt in a centrifuge chamber. Drax’s other base, for the launch site for his shuttles, lies deep in the South American jungle inside a ruined Mayan temple.
While supposedly building the Moonraker fleet for the US government, Drax secretly manufactures and launches an orbiting space station. Drax’s scientists have also distilled a nerve gas, derived from a rare orchid indigenous to the Amazon jungle, that only kills humans. Drax plans to transport his astronauts into space, rain down the deadly nerve gas in globes onto the Earth and kill all humanity. When Bond discovers the plan he finds Drax’s jungle launch station and with the help of Dr. Goodhead travels to Drax’s space station to confront him. During the fight Bond shoots Drax with his wrist watch dart gun, pushes him into an air lock and ejects him into space. Bond and Dr. Goodhead then destroy the poisonous gas-filled globes before they can strike the Earth.

Focus Of The Week: Mayor Anya Amasova

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Major Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach), Agent XXX of the KGB, works with Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me to locate and recover two hijacked nuclear submarines. After returning from vacation, KGB chief General Gogol instructs Amasova that the nuclear submarine Potemkin has disappeared and that also her KGB lover Sergei Barsov has been killed by the British Secret Service. In Egypt, Anya pursues the submarine tracking system microfilm offered for sale by Max Kalba. There she first encounters 007 at the pyramids of Giza while meeting contact Aziz Fekkesh. She meets Bond again at The Mujaba Club where the pair shares knowledge of each other’s dossiers and attempt to bid for the microfilm. When Karl Stromberg’s henchman Jaws kills Kalba, Anya and Bond follow the giant to retrieve the microfilm, which Anya wins for the KGB by blowing narcotic dust from a trick cigarette into Bond’s face. But when she contacts General Gogol she discovers the Soviets and the British have now agreed to pool their resources meaning she needs to work with Bond again. After surviving another attack by Jaws, Anya discovers that 007 killed her KGB lover and vows to get revenge when the mission is over. Realising that shipping magnate Stromberg is behind the nuclear submarine hijack, Bond and Anya head to Stromberg’s Liparus supertanker but Anya is captured and taken to his marine research laboratory – Atlantis. Bond rescues Amasova and they flee in Stromberg’s escape pod where she must decide whether to fulfill her vow to kill Bond or not.

Focus Of The Week: Octopussy

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Octopussy (Maud Adams) is the head of a secret order of female bandits and smugglers. She lives at The Floating Palace on Lake Pichola, Udaipur, India, a man-made island populated solely by women and only accessible via her private barge. Partnered with exiled Afghan prince Kamal Kahn in a $300 million jewellery smuggling operation she runs a European circus that provides the perfect cover for this operation’s activities. Her father was Major Dexter Smythe a leading authority on octopi who gave his daughter her pet name. Octopussy first meets Bond when he sneaks into her compound to find information about the death of 009. She tries to induce Bond to work for her unaware that her partner Khan wants 007 dead. Having been betrayed by Khan (when he replaces smuggled jewels with an atomic bomb on board her circus train), she seeks revenge on Khan by using her highly trained guards to attack Khan’s Monsoon Palace.

Guy Hamilton Passes Away

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Director Guy Hamilton has passed away at the age of 93. “We mourn the loss of our dear friend Guy Hamilton who firmly distilled the Bond formula in his much celebrated direction of Goldfinger and continued to entertain audiences with Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die and The Man With The Golden Gun. We celebrate his enormous contribution to the Bond films,” said Producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli.

Sir Ken Adam

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Sir Ken Adam has passed away at the age of 95. The legendary Oscar-winning Production Designer worked on seven Bond Films including Dr .No, Thunderball and The Spy Who Loved Me. He was responsible for creating some of the most memorable sets from the Bond films including Blofeld’s volcano lair in You Only Live Twice, the interior of Fort Knox from Goldfinger and the supertanker set from The Spy Who Loved Me. Producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli said: “The Bond family mourns the passing of our beloved friend Sir Ken Adam who was so responsible for the visual style of the James Bond films from their inception. A genius and a gentleman he will be deeply missed.”

Zoe Tahir Interview

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Zoe Tahir, Bond Hair Designer is nominated for Best Contemporary Hair Styling for her work on Spectre at the 2016 Make-Up Artist and Hair Style Guild Awards this weekend. Here she explains some of Spectre’s iconic hair styles….

1.
“The dresses, the movement and the unity of the group inspired me for this sequence. I instantly knew I wanted the dancers on wheels to look like identical peg dolls, this then led to the idea of making their wigs from wool. It was clear they needed centre partings, waves and balls of wool for buns, finished off with traditional flowers.”

2.
“I initially struggled logically with this look, Lea really wanted vintage glamour and the dress did suggest it but I like a bit of realism and she’s on a train in the middle of a desert with no beauty salon I presume. Then I figured what the heck it’s a Bond film and this girl can pull apart and reassemble a gun in less than 10 seconds flat, she can for sure throw a few rollers in her hair!”

3.
“The hair for this scene evolved on its own, the weather was fierce and the more windswept it got the better it looked. Nothing like a sandstorm for some sexy Bond hair!”

4.
“I love Daniel’s hair in this scene, he has just travelled across a lake with a hat on so I wanted his hair to look disheveled and relaxed. I love the texture and movement, a nice change from the perfect hair he usually has and it really suits him.”

Steve Begg Spectre Interview

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As the Visual Effects Supervisor, what does your role cover?
I am responsible for the execution and technical design of all the Visual Effects in the movie. I have to closely liaise mainly with the Director, but also production designer, cameraman and editor, in order to make sure that our work blends in with everyone’s else’s take of the movie. I also delegate and monitor the work to the various companies that supply the VFX. There were six on this due to the workload of 1500+ VFX shots and a very short post production time, 12 weeks, where we do most of our work.

What’s the difference between your role and the Special Effects Supervisor?
The Special Effects Supervisor’s responsibility is primarily all real, practical effects on the sets and locations, from bullet hits, fires, explosions, smoke and rigs, involving the actors and stunt guys. My role is more keeping an eye on and suggesting ways of shooting shots and sequences where we will be adding CGI elements afterwards in post production. There is a big crossover though when we want to use miniatures. I come from a miniature effects background but because they are usually huge scale on a Bond film, (we call them ‘Maxitures’ or ‘Bigatures’) there are huge rigs and effects required. So the Special Effects Department usually get as heavily involved as VFX.

What were the challenges involved with the opening Sequence in Mexico City?
There were loads. From adding another 10-20 thousand CG extras to extend the crowds beyond the 1500 that we had on location. Then the opening sequence where we had to seamlessly blend together six shots photographed in different locations into one big tracking shot ending with Daniel Craig and a lady friend going into a bedroom from a Mexico hotel location to a Pinewood set piece, then out the window back to a Mexico City rooftop location. We never really lost sight of him, which normally helps with the blend-wipes. Thanks to the attention to detail by our Steadicam operator, Sam chose a take were their body positions, camera distance and motion matched from one cut to another. Then there’s the helicopter fight, which had most of our work on the movie.

What involvement did you have in the collapsing building sequence in Mexico?
We were involved in every shot up to the gunfight but the bulk of the work for us was immediately after the suitcase explosion where we tilt up following a crack rising up the building’s face as seen from Bonds POV. The whole image is CGI. Then as Bond starts to run the whole facade begins to topple towards him, again fully CGI but the actual impact is a blend where we took the timing of the impact, done by Chris Corbould’s SFX team on a huge rig on the Pinewood backlot, with a stunt double for Bond. Everything else after is a combination of minimal set pieces as Bond falls through the building with a huge overlay of CG rubble, debris dust etc.

How do VFX and SFX work together?
On these kind of movies you have to work very closely. Visual effects, special effects and stunts have to be successfully combined to create believable action scenes. It usually starts with a stunt or practical effect that needs a bit of invisible CG Sellotape to blend the lot together. The great thing is that it all starts in the real world and has to have a ‘real world’ feel, so if our stuff looks lightweight and animated, then we’ve failed.

Talk us through the fight on the helicopter and how VFX were used.
We were told a few weeks before we started shooting in Mexico that we couldn’t do the more dangerous helicopter stunts, barrel rolls etc, over the Zócalo Square due to the altitude in Mexico City. I had a feeling that was coming so I’d always had a backup plan of shooting these shots over an airfield elsewhere with the stunt helicopter, then replacing the airfield putting a full CG square, crowd and Mexico City below the helicopter, with motion-captured CG doubles fighting inside, which is what we did. We went this route rather than shooting an empty square and putting in a CG helicopter because neither Sam nor myself felt you would get believable composition and movement in the shots from that approach. All the interior and close shots of the helicopter fight were shot in a dummy helicopter fuselage on an SFX gimbal in blue-screen stage at Pinewood. Our job was to put in the spinning backgrounds of Mexico City. Because they would have reflected all of the lights, camera crew and blue-screen, I had them take out the windows and bubble canopy on the dummy helicopter. CG versions were added in later by us with reflections of the sky and city to help sell the illusion.

How involved were you in the explosion in Morocco that earned the Guinness World Record?
The entire sequence once Bond was in the crater was shot on a flat desert plain near the real crater mountain exterior you see earlier as he approaches, with minimal sets and flats for the actors to react to and it gave the camera crew something to lineup on. Everything else buildings, domes, crater walls were created by us. The explosion was mainly real and full scale created by Chris Corbould and his team. Basically there were minimal buildings in those shots, as they would be added in post and roto-scoped in and around the engulfing detonations. Chris used a lot of high explosives and thousands of gallons of gasoline to get the sequential, advancing explosion effect. It was a very tricky shot for us, blending the buildings into and behind the explosions.

How did you go about MI6’s destruction?
I’d considered miniatures for the MI6 building demolition and the collapsing building in Mexico, but the elaborate camera move that had originally been planned (simplified a little later) for the opening sequence ruled out miniatures for me. Also, the sheer scale of the MI6 building didn’t really lend itself to miniatures. The problem with a collapsing model is it has to be structurally strong enough to support itself but weak enough to break into thousands of bits of debris. That’s very difficult to do on a miniature scale. I’ve never seen a miniature building collapse believably without looking like a load of Lego bits. So we went with an entirely CG approach for its destruction.

What impact did filming at night in the centre of London have on the visual effects?
It was massive! Not only did we have to paint out movie lights that were coming into shots (very difficult as they’d flare across the lens), we had to create the foliage on the trees throughout London in the sequences shot April-May, look barren and wintry to match footage that had been shot earlier in the production in December the year before.

How do you go about filming something like the helicopter crash on Westminster Bridge?
This was shot on the 007 stage at Pinewood. It involved a full-scale prop helicopter flown on wires crashing onto a partial set piece of Westminster Bridge. Not only did we add CG rotor blades to the aircraft, but the entire environment. Whilst the bridge was built on the 007 Stage and an enormous translight put in place to depict the scenery either side. We had to extend the bridge, adding the whole of Westminster and police blockades at the ends of the bridge with flashing lights, all put in afterwards. Every single shot in that sequence where you see Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes and Léa Seydoux has CG backgrounds added in. A lot of work!

What VFX sequence took up the most time and planning?
The opening shot and helicopter fight. We spent months pre-visualising both. The previs was most useful in demonstrating to Sam Mendes and Hoyte van Hoytema the DOP, the trickiness and potential problems in blending together shots that were shot in different locations months and continents apart.

Which Visual Effect in Spectre are you most proud of?
I think the opening continuous shot as it’s the most un-Bond like effects shot there has been, and I think it pleasantly caught a lot of people by surprise, and, the little CG mouse that comes out in the hotel room and ultimately runs into a hole in the wall revealing the secret hiding place that Bond has been looking for in Tangier. I’m very happy with that as most people can tell when they see a massive building collapsing in a city like London that it’s probably CG, but not necessarily a little mouse. Most people bought it as a real mouse!