Big Scene development post 12 - The Penthouse scenes

Since my last post, I've been hard at work with a number of scenes; the biggest of which is the modified version of the confrontation between Bond and Blofeld in Willard Whyte's Penthouse.

It is a pivotal scene in both the original film and Diamonds Reimagined, as it is where Blofeld re-enters the narrative and we get a slice of what he's been up to.

But the key to this new version was to replace all shots with Charles Gray with animated ones featuring a Blofeld with the likeness of Telly Savalas, but has Donald Pleasence's scar and hopefully also a voice like his which I will add in post-production.

I had done multiple tests in the past for this scene, but until December 2024 I had yet to actually produce any final footage. The reason for this is that I hadn't yet finished the re-creation of the Penthouse set.

An early version of Blofeld's desk. Note the different chair - I had yet to choose one that could convincingly turn around.

Most of it I built around 2019 - 2021, so much earlier in the project. The layout was pretty much there, but the setting dressing was incomplete. I needed to render a variety of props, particularly to decorate the tables where Whyte's inventions were placed.

Objects like the safe as seen in this 2020 test for the Penthouse set were later removed. Bond's dinner jacket was also later altered to include the burgundy coloured lapels seen in the original film.

Only once that was done, did I start animating the scene's new shots. By then I had revised the dialogue in the script so as to ensure that whilst much of the scene's structure from the original film is retained, there is a more charged atmosphere. After all, Bond is determined to avenge Tracy by killing Blofeld with his bare hands if possible; but he is stymied by there being two Blofelds in the room.   

Notice how Bond doesn't have many lines in this extract. Blofeld is doing most of the talking, so much of Bond's emotions have to be portrayed with thinly veiled expressions of hatred towards his nemesis.

"Bond is about to leap for him", says Tom Mankiewicz's original script for the scene. This is not apparent in the original film, where the scene is edited as if to suggest Bond just stares in surprise at seeing Blofeld in Whyte's chair before he hears the second Blofeld from above.

None of this, though, stops Bond from being genuinely impressed by Blofeld's voice-changing machine. I had originally written a more dismissive line: "So that's how you've been impersonating Whyte." But then I changed it back to the original film's "Well, that's a neat trick." 

My reasoning for this is that Bond still considers Blofeld to be a clever opponent, plus he's willing to compliment him so as to make him lower his guard. Both Blofelds, as you can see in the script extract from earlier, are more content to taunt Bond.

Speaking of the voice-changing machine, one of the trickier parts of the scene was animating shots of Blofeld on the phone.

Unfortunately, the only phone holding animation available in Moviestorm is one in which the character grabs the phone by the right hand, not the left as Charles Gray does in the original film.

There is no interactive rotary phone prop in Moviestorm, so I had to rely on a trick I have developed for all uses of the phone in Diamonds Reimagined. There is a phone booth prop where a character can hold a reciever, so I set up a shot with a camera inside the phone booth prop, which is then hidden so I can replace it with a Sketchup model of a rotary phone reciever and cord.

The effect is not perfect. To animate the character picking up the phone, I basically have to painstakingly place a reciever & cord prop on the set multiple times. Each one is positioned to fit into the character's hand for a separate key frame, and I need to hide and unhide them depending on which position the hand is currently in.

Here is the raw footage for that particular shot, just to demonstrate how the phone animation looks. It doesn't move once Blofeld is holding the reciever to his ear, except for when he replaces it:

To save memory, all of this was done on a separate set. I placed a wall with the exact same texture as the one on the full Penthouse set behind Blofeld, as well as the chair and the golden armillary sphere prop (though the latter does not appear in this shot).

The reciever cord does not extend to the phone as I only created as much of it as needed to be seen in shot.

The same set was used for a later scene, replacing the shots showing Blofeld on the phone to Bond, who is using Q's invention to pretend to be Bert Saxby.

Blofeld was very much animated with Donald Pleasence's portrayal in mind. Though the scar does not extend onto his eye, I still tried often to replicate the creepy wide-eyed gaze that Pleasence gave off, with the occasional movement of the cigarette that Savalas gave the character.

Blofeld's character model is one of my favourites I've created for Diamonds Reimagined, because of how scary the face looks up close.

 I've already mentioned how the scenes went through a lot of changes both in scripting and direction, but its ending is one of the more significant.

For most of the scene, the main prop for the cat (though having an idle animation) is never seen from the front. This is because I couldn't find a texture with a face to map onto it!

Like in the original film, Bond was always meant to kill the fake Blofeld by kicking the cat so that it ran towards him. I wasn't sure how to animate the cat in one of the shots, but in the end I settled for a bit of stop motion with a specially rendered Sketchup model. This secondary cat prop was programmed to navigate as if making a leap, and I would move the legs & tail to a new position as the cat landed.

This shot with the cat going between the fake Blofeld's legs is very short, as I didn't want the cat prop to be seen for long. The remaining shots of it come from the original film.

The fake Blofeld's death is similar to the original film, only he does not make an exaggerated cry of pain like Charles Gray did. Instead, his eyes just widen with shock and he falls right down onto the floor.

The piton embedded in fake Blofeld's skull is a post-production effect, added frame by frame in the editing software. This saved time as it would've been time-consuming to do in Moviestorm. The blood however, is a texture on the character model.

 The real Blofeld still pulls a revolver on Bond, but in earlier versions of Diamonds Reimagined's script, Irma Bunt would've entered the room at this stage.

She was supposed to dispatch of Bond using a spike-tipped shoe, similar to the one used by Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love (1963), only not one laced with poison, but just a sleeping draught. 

In the end, I cut this and replaced it with the shots of Bond being forced into the lift and being knocked out with smoke from the original film. This meant I had less to animate, and in any event Bunt complicated and padded the scene too much. I needed to wrap things up and ensure the scene still synced with John Barry's Death at the Whyte House track.

The point of this moment is that Bond is rather glum and feels beaten. He has just exhausted his last opportunity to kill the real Blofeld, and he's lucky that Blofeld hasn't killed him yet.

So when Blofeld seemingly lets him go free, especially after all that, his baffled yet suspicious expression makes even more sense considering their history together.

That's all there is for the confrontation with Blofeld scene, but I did actually plan a few other shots on the Penthouse set.

A few were scrapped due to changes in the script, but the one that stayed does actually feature Irma Bunt in one shot. This is when Blofeld is calling Metz to inform him to move the operation forwards by 24 hours.

This is Bunt's one and only appearance in this costume, and she would've appeared like this in the Penthouse confrontation had I not removed her from it.

Another shot I animated is a moment that was in Tom Mankiewicz's script for the original film, but is never seen in the final print. This is Bert Saxby emerging from the lift; thereby alerting Blofeld that whoever had called him was an impersonator.
 

The doors and walls of the lift are separate objects which have been added to the lift prop.

I'm torn on whether to include this shot in the final version of Diamonds Reimagined. There was good reason for cutting it from the original film, as it means there's more suspense as to whether Bond has properly fooled Blofeld. Plus, when Saxby does show up at Whyte's summer home, it comes as a surprise. Keeping this would spoil it, so maybe I should save it for a director's cut?

Either way, I'm very glad to have the Penthouse scenes in the can. They're essential to the plot, and it takes me one step closer to finish working on the middle of Diamonds Reimagined. Once a few other scenes are done, I can move on to the pre-credits sequence set in Cairo...

Till then,

- The Retro Captain