Big Scene development post 1: Motorbike Chase in Whyte Tectronics complex and across the Nevada desert (Part 1)

There are two chase scenes in total that I have to animate for Diamonds Are Forever Re-Imagined, one of which is a replacement for the infamous Moon Buggy sequence where Bond escapes from the Whyte Tectronics complex in a very comical vehicle.

The replacement instead puts Bond (and Tiffany Case since the structure of the story has been changed to delay her switching over to Bond's side) on a motorbike where he'll be pursued by cars, all-terrain motor-bikes and even a Dune Buggy across the Nevada desert.

I started the development of this escape scene by first animating a typical Bondian shootout scene, as demonstrated by this still:

From this I then tested placing Bond and Tiffany onto a Motorbike to see how well they would sit on it and move about. The Dune Buggy, which is driven by the minor henchmen The Spang Brothers (taken directly from Ian Fleming's original DAF novel), was also tested.

Then I properly began filming the Chase Sequence, beginning with the segments that take place inside the complex itself before Bond and Tiffany reach the exterior in the desert. Long corridor sets were neccessary to achieve this, so that we could have some moving backgrounds behind a Mid-Shot of the characters just sitting on the Motorbike without the vehicle actually moving.

But now that I've reached the point where I have to make the sequences set outside the complex in the desert, things get trickier. Making accurate desert terrain and replicating the scenery from the original film is no easy task, so I have to improvise my development process here.

To begin with, I re-constructed the dome and its surroundings such as the Toll Booth seen in the film. Not everything was completely to scale, but the angle of the shots I was using made the objects look further away than they were.

Then I filmed the only shots for which this exterior set is needed, as the rest of them written in my script all come from the original film.

For reference, here is a sample of this series of shots from my screenplay where Bond shoots the car barrier off the toll booth in order to drive past the Security Guards and into the desert.

With those shots finished, I am now at the stage where I have to create the most complicated parts of the chase. The Motorbike and the other vehicles have to drive and do stunts across realistic desert terrain, and filming all this will entail a lot of trial and error.

So I've decided it's better for me to first plan out the various shots for the chase scene by storyboarding it. At the same time, I can practice making desert terrain in the animation software without filming on them. And this "practice terrain" can be used as the background of storyboard shots like this one, where I just put a greyscale pencil filter over each element.

Once I know what I want the shots to look like from the storyboards and I have good experience with creating the terrain, I can properly continue with the animating.

And that's it for now! This will no doubt be one of the most complex scenes to make for the whole project, but I can assure you it will still become an exciting sequence once it's done. 

I will update with another post on this scene sometime in the future once more progress has been made on it. Till then!

What? Use a ridiculous Moon Buggy like that to escape from a scientific facility? No thanks, we'll zoom on the Motorbike instead.