"They have a different emotional response to it. "I think the audience can tell the difference between a real and a fantasy effect," says Mendes. (Corbould won his first and only Oscar in 2011 for his work on Inception.) And of course Sam Mendes, the master storyteller behind American Beauty and Revolutionary Road who directed both Spectre and the previous Bond entry, Skyfall. And Christopher Nolan, with his literate-stoner ideas and complex action sequences. There's Paul Greengrass and his twitchy, roughed-up Bourne films. What they do require, however, is a lot of planning and thought." They require keen minds, who are certain of what they want, which explains why demand for Corbould's type of special effect comes from a small but influential handful of directors-auteurs handed the reigns to big-budget franchises. So the idea that special effects are a luxury is wrong. Computer-generated images are just as, if not more, expensive. "There's a base assumption that special effects are in some way more expensive," says Mendes. It's not that what Corbould and Fisher do is costly. CG effects are so overused now they just aren't memorable." "These CG guys will promise a director the world, saying 'we can do this later on, we can tweak it, get exactly what you want.' You just have to make your case that these interactions with the actors will give it more weight. I asked American special effects artist, Scott Fisher, the man responsible for practical effects on CG-heavy films like Interstellar, X-Men: First Class, and the upcoming Suicide Squad, how specialists like him and Corbould make their case. Corbould and his team stand silent, eyes darting back and forth from the monitors to the chopper. I maneuver myself behind the assistant director so I can both watch the helicopter hit the bridge and see the action through the six monitors, one for each camera angle. We stand silent in an area I'm told is safe, which seems optimistic. "All cameras rolling you all know where the fire exits are." "It'll be a 3-2-1-Action," says the stage manager. I notice firemen standing off to the side. ![]() I keep looking up at the helicopter, swaying almost imperceptibly. Corbould casually warns us about the ten-foot ball of flames and the lights going out. "Every permutation."Įveryone gathers on the bridge for one last safety briefing. "Over the last month I've dreamt of this shot probably 50 times," he says. ![]() All this for maybe ten seconds of footage.Īs his crew finalizes the setup, Corbould has the telltale squint of someone ticking off a mental checklist. But in order to get the helicopter to reach "flying" speed, Corbould and his crew purchased a winch designed to launch glider planes at up to 60 mph. For instance: a special track will channel the hanging helicopter along a very specific and photogenic path. Both Corbould and Sony refuse to talk costs, but suffice to say that corners were not cut. This whole setup in front of me-the painstakingly perfect streetscape, the dangling chopper, the pounds of explosive, the mathematics underpinning it all-took four months to design and build. I'm already wondering what will keep the real chopper from tearing apart the fake bridge, sending pieces of fake London flying everywhere. Hanging in one of the top corners of the hangar, about 30 feet off the ground, is a very real, several-ton, executive-style helicopter, rigged to zipline across the sky and smash into the bridge. Inside the airplane hangar-sized space is a full-size replica of the northern half of the famous four-lane bridge, surrounded by a 50-foot-tall backlit city skyline. ![]() No in 1962-and today it's been transformed to look like central London for the filming of the final action sequence of the latest Bond installment, Spectre. This is the famed 007 Stage-used for every James Bond film since Dr. I'm actually indoors, at Pinewood film studios on the outskirts of London. And a group of people staring at a helicopter dangling on a wire. Instead, there's nothing but an empty hundred-foot-long stretch of roadway and an ominous stillness. It's a clear, damp night and I can see Big Ben's lights reflecting on wet asphalt that would normally be covered by a chaotic snarl of brake lights and black cabs. Staring across a completely empty Westminster Bridge in central London is, well, weird. Related: The Best Bond-Girl Stunts of All Time
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