Thanks to vfx designer Kevin Tod Haug, and our friends at Sony, we have an amazing collection of before and after shots from the new Bond film, and some of Kevin’s personal behind the scenes photos.
In our interview with vfx designer Kevin Tod Haug,- link here – we discuss the visual effects of the latest Bond film.
Quantum of Solace marks Kevin Haug’s fifth collaboration with director Marc Forster (after Finding Neverland, Stay, Stranger than fiction, and KiteRunner). Haug also supervised the effects for three films by David Fincher: The Game, Fight Club, and Panic Room. His body of work is outstanding, and the seamless nature of the visual effects in Solace are testament to his skill and experience.
Skydiving
Before
Final
Before
Final
Sky diving and plane effects by Double Negative UK.
Before
Final
A wind tunnel facility called ‘Bodyflight’ was used to film the scene in which Bond and Camille freefall out of a DC3 plane in Bolivia. ‘Bodyflight’ allowed the actors to ‘act’ while falling instead requiring face replacement or stunt actors falling while hiding their faces. Bodyflight is the UK’s and the world’s largest skydiving wind tunnel in Bedford.
Kevin Haug reviews a take
Lighting options were somewhat limited
The Monitoring station
Codex recorders
From our other Bond Story:
Kevin Haug explained ” So what we ended up doing was having them really skydive but in a controlled environment so the 8 Dalsas were part of an array of 16 cameras that we shot in a 5m diameter wind tunnel in Bedford UK. They learned to skydive. We had stunt doubles as well but most of what you see is actually Daniel and Olga. The problem of being in a 5m tube is that you can only be so close and you can certainly only be so far away. We had a cameraman in the tunnel with them for the closeups but you wanted to be far away you can’t do it. The array allowed us to synthesize the camera. As well there’s a lighting problem in a tube so we lit them as flat and featureless as humanly possible and then we made CG versions of them so that we could relight them. A horrible roto problem as you can imagine. Having to roto the ripples in their face and what their hair is doing. It got fairly crazy. So we had 8 Dalsa Origins laid out in an array on one side of the tube and in between them we snuck another 7 CineAlta cameras and also there was one above and one below. There was an Arri 3 inside the tunnel with them. And they were all running in sync, even the Arri. We worked out a way of using a crystal sync device where we synced everything to an atomic clock in Boulder Colorado so any given frame had 16 different images of it that we could draw upon. We had 4K and 2K cameras and the stuff that came from film we scanned at 2K.”
While the actual actors did their own takes doubles were used to test and line up shots
Note the tracking markers back on the back wall
A stitched high res frame
A shot is designed for filming
Plane Attack
Before
Final
Before
Final
Fully CG shots
Wireframe
Final CGI frame
Wireframe
Final CGI frame
Wireframe
Final CGI frame
Wire work and stunts
Complex wire work was needed to allow the real actors to work and jump safely
The Wire cranes tower over the city
In this complex stunt glass explosions and actors all had to be co-ordinated
Second unit director Dan Bradley was 2nd unit on Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum
Impressive set extensions extended this explosive hotel finale
This Bond film was on location more than any other all over the world
For the final hotel action sequence, the interiors were built at Pinewood and the exteriors were shot in Chile – effects by MPC.
The film was shot on 35mm film except for the Dalsa work above and the Horse Race sequence. The Palio horse race which has taken place every year since 1644 in Siena was the backdrop for an early chase. This was another digitally captured sequence where this time, Arri 2Ks were used because the production needed to run the camera for a very long time without having to change film. Framestore UK did all the effects to do with Senia.
Link here for the full interview with effects designer Kevin Haug