Replacing the Circus Circus scene: making of the Las Vegas Country Club scene (Old version)

Note: this post describes the making of an older version of the Las Vegas Country Club scene. That version has since been scrapped, and will not feature in the final edit. 

You can read about the newer version in the post linked below:  

https://diamondsareforeverre-imaginedproject.blogspot.com/2024/01/big-scene-development-post-10-progress.html

Circus Circus Hotel and Casino. 

It's the location used in the original film to house the scene where the CIA attempt to capture Tiffany Case using the smuggled diamonds as bait, only for them to lose her due to a mixture of incompetence on the agents' part as well as some rather silly shenannigins including an attraction where a girl turns into a gorilla...

Suffice to say, it is an example of some of Diamonds Are Forever's weaker attempts at humour, and for that reason I always intended to cut the silliness out of my fan-edit to keep the tone consistent. 

Unfortunately, removing certain segments of the scene would render it completely unusable (the Zambora sequence is vital for Tiffany making her escape after all!) meaning I had to scrap Circus Circus completely and start from scratch. 

So where would "Operation Passover" take place instead? My inspiration for a solution came from the Diamonds Are Forever novel, where Bond smuggles the diamonds into the States by hiding them in Golf Balls. 

Therefore I decided to set the scene at the Golf Course closest to the Westgate Hotel (then known as the Hilton which served as the exterior of the Whyte House); the Las Vegas Country Club.
Let's look at some specific shots in the scene as I animated it:

Because of the limitations of the Moviestorm software, it was not possible to actually animate a character playing golf as I originally scripted. Therefore instead I had to open the scene with a man watching TV of a Golf tournament (in reality some stock footage from the 70s).

This shot uses greenscreen that allowed me to place in a background of part of the Golf Course (which I manually had to edit so that it zoomed in on the characters at the correct speed!).

What really made this scene tricky to construct was the fact that I simply couldn't convincingly re-create the entire Golf Course due to all the complicated terrain. So for some shots I resorted to using a backdrop with characters in front to create the illusion of them being on the huge golf course.

In addition, it was important to increase the size of the crowd slightly to make the effect a little more convincing. To prevent the software from crashing because of the huge memory it takes to display so many characters, I would use a similar duplicate of the same shot. This time the background was completely greenscreen but with a few more characters added in.

In other shots however, I had to create small portions of the golf course designed specifically to hide the rest of the empty set in the background. Most were suited towards a specific shot, such as the above example where the small hill behind Tiffany is tall enough to cover the frame.

Shots that cut back to Felix and Bond use a simple image of the Golf Course as the background, which had to be slightly enlarged for this shot as like the original in the Circus Circus scene, the camera is closer to Felix. The only real issue with the greenscreen techniques here is that it leads to a lot of fringing (especially on characters' hair!), which can be a little distracting.

Since there's no padding like the water pistol game in the original film, Tiffany figures out the diamonds are in the golf balls contained in the suitcase she's subtly handed. So she can simply begin rushing through crowds as the CIA pursue her. Again, the framing of the shot never allows the camera to see too much of this small area representing part of the Golf Course.

Tiffany's escape was rather difficult to animate. This was because I had to convincingly get multiple crowd members to run in front of Maxwell and the other CIA Agents in the pursuit so that they would be temporarily blocked from catching her. A lot of adjusting the walking/running speed was neccessary!

The last few shots in the Golf Course were very tricky to set up - in this shot you can see I had to add a little bit of landscape in the background to make things look more convincing. Remember, I didn't have a full set so this was essentially a compromise. 

The people walking whilst the CIA Agents chase after Tiffany also had to react to what was happening around them, which gives the scene a little more realism.

And finally, the scene finishes off with this shot of the Agents emerging from the golf course into the car park. Although I did originally plan to build the entire car park I later discovered it wasn't neccessary due to the framing.

Therefore only this little bit was created, with trees used to hide the lack of landscape behind the car park.

Overall, this scene was incredibly time-consuming and tiresome to direct and animate but I think it turned out fairly well. It's not perfect by any means, and only lasts roughly 3 minutes. 

Could it have benefitted from wider shots to show the scale of the location? Perhaps, but in the end the limitations of the software allowed me to create a sequence that while lacking in ultra-complex movement did at least have a sense of claustrophobia. 

In the end, I think it's a decent replacement for the Circus Circus scene that serves to move the plot along rather than bog it down with padding and silly moments. And that is what's most important!

- The RetroCaptain