"The tragedy of action films and any cinematographer will tell you this, is that a lot of the fun stuff is done by the second unit," says Méheux. We did one card game that was all filmed with a static camera, and we did another where the camera was constantly moving around the table. "The audience isn’t necessarily going to know the game, so if Bond says, ‘I’ll raise you,’ and they turn over the next card, how many people in the audience will know if it’s a good card or a bad card? One of Méheux’s challenges was finding cinematic ways to cover these scenes. True to the spirit of Fleming’s novel, a lot of the drama takes place at the card tables, where a form of Texas Holdem Poker has replaced the more Continental game of baccarat. Méheux used 5K tungsten lights without lenses and lit the glass from the other side, letting the different squares cast discernible shadows on the actors and the set. We are really still in the Czech Republic and this is the town of Loket. Still in the parking lot outside the Pupp Casino Club in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. He checks out the car and investigates the envelope left for him at the hotel. The 2006 comedy 'Last Holiday' featuring Queen Latifah also used the location. The pair are picked up in Montenegro (but really Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic) in a black Daimler taxi. "People are so used to seeing all these stunts and everything in color, and we go right into a scene of black-and-white with very little stunt work." You have to be tremendously organized and able to work under extreme pressure for a long time on movies like this. His evolution is really what the book’s about, and that’s what this movie is about, too." Obviously the same angle a little tricky to achieve without a step ladder and/or access to the building! Vesper is now much closer to where she started, passing near an apartment house 'Sotoportego de le Colonne' in the San Marco area of Venice. You'd almost think Daniel Craig had only just stepped out of shot....Another great location grab by Nicholas Knight. Daniel Craig is on the hunt with the buildings of the Fondamenta Toletta behind him. It's almost like the Bond crew only just left this pretty location. We built the whole set of stairs onstage at Barandov, and on each level, a doorway and window appeared to be leading to a corridor. "The bad guys attack Bond and then they all go down four flights of stairs, throwing themselves over banisters and such. "It’s much more immediate and horrible when you get the camera right in there," says Campbell of the handheld work. Martin does a lot of takes and there’s always something a little different from take to take. I’ve worked on four pictures with Martin Campbell, starting with Goldeneye, and even there we did a lot less handheld work. Kodak’s newer 500-speed stock, Vision2 5218, was available, but Méheux says he preferred 5279 because he had been somewhat disappointed with the final colors rendered by 5218 in The Legend of Zorro. "I don’t like to use a lot of stocks because it confuses me and everyone else," he declares. For the color material, he used two Kodak Vision negatives, 500T 5279 and 200T 5274, and often overexposed them slightly to add density. The production, which had six camera units in all, carried Arricam Studio bodies and an Arricam Lite (for handheld and Steadicam work), as well as Arri 435s and 235s. Part of the dialogue in our opening sequence was done with very carefully controlled shots that have huge things in the foreground and faces pushed to the corners of the frame. And although otherwise not that interesting, it does show how a bit of set dressing can change a location and save a crew a 6000 mile trip to film in the real country! For the real James Bond fan there is the 007 MAGAZINE and Website that is full of information concerning locations, sets and facts about this and all James Bond films. It was useful to be able to review the work on the entire sequence in the DI suite, rather than on a shot-by-shot basis, and to modify and refine the effect in real-time." In fact, during the climactic fight sequence in the sinking house, we applied some camera shake in the DI — an effect that’s more commonly applied during the effects work. Mollaka runs up an unidentified road in Madagascar (really The Bahamas). Some scenes for the earlier Bond film ‘Thunderball’ were shot nearby at a hotel which is also now part of the RBDF Coral Harbour military base. Nick Knight captured this shot at the weekend as found that in daylight the building is brown! The more correct it is when I arrive at the DI house, the quicker and easier it’s going to be to grade it. We were able to finesse and help bed these shots in seamlessly — the airport sequence, the sinking building in Venice, and many others. "I think it’s worth adding that the film has several hundred visual effects shots, which makes it the type of project that really benefits from the DI process. For the flashback fight within that sequence, Phil wanted a lot of contrast and grain applied in order to amplify the violence. Méheux chose sets of Cooke S4 primes and Angenieux Imagon zooms. I’ve done five films with Martin using anamorphic lenses, but he likes to work in a very kinetic way camera-wise, and I’m more comfortable doing that with Super 35." Today, and I think this is because of television’s influence, directors seem to want the camera in closer than ever. The greater depth of field facilitated by spherical lenses recalled one of Techniscope’s characteristics. Méheux approached the two murders depicted in the opening sequence differently. "Some people shoot color and get rid of it in the digital intermediate DI, but I didn’t like the look of that. The filmmakers decided to confound Bond fans’ expectations from the very start by opening with a black-and-white sequence, which shows Bond committing his first two government-sanctioned murders.
