Woah, it's been quite a while since the last post, hasn't it? Truth be told, although I've not updated this blog since May there has been an immense amount of progress made since then.
What else was I doing in the meantime?
I've been interacting with the Bond community on Twitter, re-watching various Bond films to put myself in the right frame of mind and made key alterations to the script to tighten dialogue and action up.
And yes, I did hear that No Time To Die might finally come out. So I'm quite excited for that too! But anyway, there's a lot of ground to cover in this post about what I've completed for the project, so here goes...
1. The Oil Rig battle sequence is finished!
Yes, the first major set-piece of the finale is done. It took me roughly 3 and a half months, but the end result I think is decently satisfying.
This is your You Only Live Twice/On Her Majesty's Secret Service style battle with a good guy army (in this case Draco's Unione Corse are back!) against a bad guy army (SPECTRE henchmen).
It's required careful methods of filming to hide certain parts of the sets which don't contain characters when they should.
But sometimes you need large numbers of characters on set at once, so you have to plan in advance to know which have been killed and must by lying dead. Or which ones you can place wherever you want to be doing things in the background.
I studied the style in which Bond Directors like Guy Hamilton, Lewis Gilbert and naturally Peter Hunt would've shot these battle sequences. Which I hope adds a degree of authenticity to the finished scene. And I have every respect for those Directors because it must've been really tough to handle such a large amount of extras on set!
The editing was actually tougher than I originally anticipated. So much had to be reordered, cut and sometimes even re-shot to make it work. The key was to build tension to the final countdown, so that your audience doesn't lose sight of the stakes involved. After all, the battle musn't just become a mindless set of shooting and explosions.
2. Minor re-shoots performed on the Motorbike Chase + editing decisions made for the sequence
The escape from Whyte Tectronics + Motorbike chase scene as I originally animated and edited it totalled to about 9 minutes. And I wasn't totally impressed by some of the effects I had produced for stunts such as the Motorbike driving off a cliff.
That's because some of it was done with lots of chroma-key (greenscreen/redscreen..). And having learnt some new tricks that allowed me to move Helicopters diagonally in the Oil Rig scenes, I knew I could do better.
As I was working on these replacement shots, I also came to the conclusion that the sequence itself was far too long. Whatever you do with an action sequence (especially in Bond films) I don't think it should be too excessive.
That's the reason why I've made the tough decision to cut out 2/3 of the Motorbike chase, which contains a part on a desert road and a part with a dune buggy, for timing reasons. I feel this is for the best, especially since I'm keeping the Las Vegas car chase with the Ford Mustang which will come after the Motorbike chase.
3. The last scene to be set on the Oil Rig is currently being animated
The climax to Diamonds Reimagined is set to be quite big in itself, and it will take a while before I can do the Salt Mine chase + final fight between Bond and Blofeld. In the meantime, I'm working on a short sequence of Blofeld attempting to escape the Oil Rig while Bond pursues.
One key part of this has been finished, and it's a series of shots of the Oil Rig exploding. Yes, in proper classic Bond style I have to include a part where the villain's base is totally destroyed.
So like John Stears or Derek Meddings would've done, I had to build a smaller scale Oil Rig model (albeit virtually, since this is an animated scene) with several pieces that could "breakaway" and look as if they're falling into the ocean.
Naturally, there had to be several smoke and splash effects to sell the destruction of the Oil Rig. One of the legs of the Rig had already been destroyed by limpet mines earlier in the story, and the rest detonate almost simultaneously as timed by Felix Leiter and the CIA. Then of course it begins sinking...
As of now, I'm getting close to finishing off everything on this damn Oil Rig set. Bond is climbing up the crane to attach a special Q Branch weather balloon to Blofeld's Bathosub, whilst the Crane Operator tries to shake him off.
So that's everything I can update you on now. The filming of the finale is in full swing, and hopefully by the end of this year I may have finished most of it. Once that's done, it's off to more re-shoots of earlier scenes.
So till then!
- The RetroCaptain
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