Big Scene development post 10: Progress since 2022 and plans for the project in 2024!

Woah! I know it's been a while since I last updated this blog, but fear not - this project is still alive and well! 

Although I have made progress, most of the work has been re-doing or tweaking a number of scenes I'd animated earlier. 

Not because all of them were complete rubbish, but there are often minor details or specific chunks of scenes which I now know I could do better. After all, over the course of creating the animated scenes, I have become more experienced with using the Moviestorm software.

Take the Oil Rig climax for example - in many shots I used a low poly model of a Bell Helicopter, which unfortunately didn't render as well as I'd hoped. 

As you can see in the screenshot below, the texture of the bodywork is just plain white, and the glass of the window is not all the same opacity. 

So I decided to redo a number of shots featuring the white helicopters, and replace them with ones where I use a much more detailed model.

Furthermore, I made alterations to the various shootouts, particularly the one inside Blofeld's office. This was not just to improve the animation or even add special story beats, but simply to make the scene flow better when I re-edit it.

The main thrust of 2023 for the project, however, was of course the re-shoots of the Las Vegas Country Club sequence. As I went over in my last post, I've since become unhappy with the effects I used to bring it to life the first time around. So I decided to use practically no greenscreen, except when neccessary. 

I first re-did the cutaways to Bond and Felix, which are now set on the balcony of Felix's room in the Whyte House, rather than the golf course itself. This was relatively enjoyable to work on, as I naturally prefer animating simple dialogue scenes. The set was basic, but as you'll see in the video of the sequence at the end of this post, I added a few 'easter eggs' on the table. One of them is a reference to the scene from On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) when Bond was in Gumbold's office, waiting for his safe cracking gadget to do its work.

I then moved onto building the sets for the golf course itself; both the exterior and the interior. My intention was to more or less replicate the real-life Las Vegas Country Club based on existing photographs from both the 1970s and now.

Credit to vintagelasvegas.com for the fantastic collection of
photographs they have of Las Vegas from this era. Without them,
I would not have had such good reference for building these sort of
exterior sets.

I did naturally use a bit of artistic licence in deciding what to add to the exterior; a dining area, a viewing balcony, etc. The real location may not have had them in the 70s, but I wanted to create good opportunities for interesting shots. I'm very fond of using low angles, not just for artistic purposes; they also allow me to hide the ends of the set.

Of course, the real Las Vegas Country Club is situated behind what used to be The Hilton Hotel (now known as Westgate Hotel); the location used for The Whyte House in the film. So naturally, I had to build a simple model of the WH for the background of the exterior set. I would like to think that Willard Whyte also owns the golf course, which could make it The Whyte House Country Club.

I am overall satisfied with the final result, even if it took an excruciatingly long time to complete the exterior set. I hope it looks pretty convincing to viewers, especially as I had to remove certain parts of it for specific shots just so I had enough memory to render them!

Anyway, having finished that sequence, I have since moved onto the final major scene I will be reshooting. This is the following sequence where Bond pursues first Tiffany, then Saxby and finally Metz through Las Vegas and then into the desert, leading him to the Whyte Tectronics facility. 

In the original film, Bond had already forced Tiffany to help him, so she was the one pursuing Metz to the facility, in her Red Ford Mustang. Bond of course, snuck into the back of the minibus whilst Tiffany stalled Metz at a petrol station. 

In Diamonds Re-Imagined, I changed things up so that Tiffany only learns that Bond is not Peter Franks until after the night-time car chase, so Bond is instead driving in his Aston Martin DBS (which returns from OHMSS!) to pursue Metz. Tiffany meanwhile, is in the minibus with Metz as a passenger, as she has only just passed on the real diamonds.

This is how part of the set for a roadway outside of the Whyte House looked when I started constructing it. Once again, background objects will be important for the creating the right perspective in the shots!

Whilst I am currently building a roadway set to show Bond in the DBS tailing Metz, I have also partially recreated the petrol station from the original film for a few shots. This allows me to replace the Ford Mustang with the DBS in the background.

The original version, with the Ford Mustang.

The animated version - notice Tiffany seated in the back of the minibus!

 That's all for now; the next time I post, I'll go over more of the progress on this scene as I continue building the roadway set. For now, enjoy the finished new version of the Las Vegas Country Club sequence, which replaces the original film's Circus Circus scene:

Till then.

- The RetroCaptain