Greetings! Although it has been over a month since my last update, I will now share the significant progress on the project that I was remarkably able to do in the whole of March.
Four entire scenes have been completed; the Motorbike chase across the Nevada Desert (which I started animation of in December 2020), a conversation between Tiffany Case and Felix Leiter in the Whyte House Bridal Suite, a car tailing sequence outside Las Vegas and finally a shooutout between 007 and some Spangled Mob gangsters.
Let's take a look at each scene:
The Motorbike Chase
As I have said in previous posts on this scene, it is a replacement for the infamous Moon Buggy chase in the original film. The real problem with it was that Bond never seemed to be in much danger, especially since the guards chasing him kept crashing and looking like idiots.
Therefore, with this replacement scene it was neccessary to change Bond's mode of transport to a Motorbike. This way he's more vulnerable and has to be careful with maneuvering terrain.
The chase is split into three sections:
1. Driving through an area with rocky hills on either side, whilst security guards pursue Bond and Tiffany in their cars.
2. Going along a long road in the desert whilst being cornered by both cars and all-terrain motorbikes.
3. Out-maneuvering a dune buggy and some all-terrain motorbikes whilst driving up desert hills and a large rock formation.
The entire scene was storyboarded over a few months whilst I began rendering assets in Moviestorm to make up the various desert sets. It was a lengthy process but one which enabled to discover what was possible to achieve in the software and what had to be abandoned.
For example, I couldn't actually have wide shots of vehicles moving up slopes and high terrain as the Moviestorm software was not designed for vertical movement. That's why upwards movement is limited to chroma-key and back-projection shots that create the illusion of the vehicles driving up terrain.
I was pleased with a lot of shots I achieved, however. During storyboarding I had the idea to implement a transition from day-time to dusk, whereby I created a sun-set lighting system. This introduced some vibrant colours into the cinematography that otherwise stuck to day-time lighting.
Tiffany and Felix's conversation in the Bridal Suite
The third and probably the last time I will make use of the Bridal Suite set in the whole film. It covers a gap not touched upon in the original film, where Tiffany is still waiting for Bond to return from his trip to Whyte's penthouse.
Naturally, if Felix Leiter (in this case Norman Burton's portrayal of the character) were to find out Bond has gone and done something as reckless as this he'd be quite annoyed and exasperated by the consequences it could cause. However, I wanted to stress that although what Felix's superiors would think about Bond's actions are on his mind, he also still cares about Bond as a friend.
That's why the characterisation of Felix in the project is slightly tweaked compared to the original film. I wanted to add some legitimate depth to his friendship with Bond that was otherwise never as important to the plot in DAF.
The scene also features Felix talking on the phone to a C.I.A Agent, which was achieved with what I call a chroma-key phone booth. To put it simply; the character walks into a phone booth and uses the phone whilst the walls are covered by greenscreen backdrops.
This is only done because the Moviestorm software's vintage phone props are static, so my technique is the next best way to simulate a 1970s phone conversation.
The car pursuit from Las Vegas into the Nevada desert
This was an interesting scene to do as it required intercutting between the likes of Wint and Kidd driving across the desert and Felix's CIA Agents trying to tail them to whichever secret location they're headed to.
It worked alongside the same filming techniques I used in the Motorbike Chase; characters sit in cars for shots when the cars are physically moving on the set (the shot can only last a few seconds due to difficulties the camera has keeping up with a moving object).
If the vehicle is stationery, then the shot can go on for longer. But most of the shots of Felix and Tiffany Case inside the Ford Mustang were done as 'back-projection' shots that used stock footage of driving across a desert road.
The sequence also makes use of an exterior set featuring the 'Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas' sign outside the city. I used this for two scenes in total, but unfortunately I forgot to save a back-up copy of the set.
The files for the set were somehow corrupted and I can't access it anymore, leaving only the rendered footage available to see what it looked like.
Shootout between Bond & Gangsters
Another scene created to replace something from the original scene (though not in the same way as the Motorbike Chase, as this changes the placement of a scene rather than removing it altogether from the fan-edit). It shows Bond having to make a daring escape from some gangsters who ambush him at Slumber Inc.
The sequence represented a slight challenge staging-wise, as I had to make the actions of the Gangsters and Bond feeling realistic enough to be believable. After all, this scene is more about building suspense as to how Bond will escape when he's in a vulnerable position; out-numbered by multiple gangsters.
There are no gadgets to instantly de-fuse a situation. He has to rely on just his gun and his wits to get himself out of this messy situation, and I think that makes the scene all the better for it.
As an in-joke, I decided to switch characters models for Bond during the last part of the shoot-out for when Bond makes his escape in the funeral hearse owned by the Slumber Inc attendants. The character model used in wide shots of this driving segment is made to look like stunt-man Richard E Butler, who was Sean Connery's driving double in parts of the original film.
What's next?
The next set of sequences currently being animated are those set aboard Blofeld's Oil Rig. The original film's climax aboard the rig is one of the lesser climaxes of the series when compared to other big battles on the villain's base the series has given us. So I hope to do it justice by significantly improving the content of the scene.
I've started off by filming Bond's arrival on the oil oig, and eventually I will move onto to filming scenes in the oil rig's control centre. After that, it's time to alter the big climatic battle that the original film limited to helicopters attacking gun turrets and firing rockets at the control centre...
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