Casino Royale Turns 10, Part 2: The Parkour Scene Is The Films Mic-Drop Moment

Casino Royale was Méheux’s third feature DI, and he says he loves the control the technology offers, but he still prefers to do as much as possible in-camera. There was a danger of losing some of the details in the black clothing, so we tweaked that a bit. For the black-and-white sequence at the beginning, Phil had shot things to be quite dark and film-noirish. According to colorist Adam Glasman, «The show’s color correction took six weeks, of which the first two were spent grading an HD version for previews. The negative was scanned at 2K on two Northlight scanners; grading was done with a Baselight 8 system, and three Arrilaser recorders were used for output. «I was very careful not to shoot at ultra-high roller lounge cocktails speeds, because I think that can be a big giveaway with water.
Onlookers watch as the fragile building starts to collapse on The Grand Canal in Venice. The statue may have been a prop as it certainly wasn’t there when Robert Redfern was on the scene. But Nicholas Knight does a fine job of capturing the location as we would normally experience it.
Nicely timed so without people the location is clearly visible – not always an easy thing to achieve, especially in a city. Nicholas Knight has submitted the first of a fantastic set of updated location shots, with the framing almost perfect to the image from the film. The car was rolled seven times in a single shot with stuntman Adam Kirley inside the car and was officially entered into the Guinness Book of World Records on 5th November 2006. Nick Knight says that the building was derelict at the time of shooting and is now being restored, two rooms having been finished allowing access. The building is actually Kaiserbad Spa in Karlovy Vary and is situated right across the road from the hotel location.
I wanted the natural light on the model to match the conditions we had when we did the Venice plates, and that gave us only about a two-hour window for shooting the model.» «The Bond movies have a tradition of large-scale miniatures,» says Begg, who also supervised the miniatures work on Batman Begins. Each Dino was numbered and fed back to a dimmer panel so we could vary the light level for different angles.» We added 216 diffusions to the skylights to spread the light even further. Under those, we hung a large silk, and then, about a foot under that, a second silk, so if you looked up, you wouldn’t see any individual sources of light. «That meant we had to bring all our light from above, pointing straight down.
«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.»
Méheux and Campbell are very much in agreement that camera movement should be motivated by the drama. Then we did one game where the camera starts pretty far back and slowly closes in on Bond and Le Chiffre.» We had a whole day of rehearsal with all the actors playing their cards and running dialogue, and then we worked out where best to seat everyone and how to shoot it. It’s all about looks, so you never really want to be too wide, but you also don’t want just a bunch of close-ups. «How do you make 10 people around a table playing cards interesting? Méheux notes the importance of collaborating with the production designer — in this case Bond film veteran Peter Lamont — and the art department when creating sets. The set went almost to the ceiling of the stage, but it was important to be able to see the whole thing and follow the fight all the way down.»
«We had a superb 2nd-unit director, Alexander Witt, who handled most of the big action scenes, and almost any stunt where the lead actors can’t be identified in the frame. One such scene takes place inside the titular casino where much of the film’s action is set. For one, he used a lot of hard sources, and for the other (set in a bathroom), he transformed the entire ceiling into one big softbox and let the white walls reflect the light. ’ and the colorist cranks the whole thing up and it’s like sunlight in there.
But what about the extended action sequence in «Casino Royale» that first gave us an idea of just how different his take on the famous Ian Fleming character would be? It may be hard for some to remember now, especially in light of the downright schmaltzy ending the character received in «No Time To Die,» but Daniel Craig’s James Bond wasn’t always given the red carpet treatment as if he were the homecoming hero for the ages. He later passes the decision off as noble («I thought one less bombmaker in the world would be a good thing»), except we know that’s a cop-out; he just can’t stand losing… and it’s only a matter of time before that flaw catches up with him in a big way. It is simply one of the most perfectly executed action set pieces in motion picture history, buoyed greatly by the casting of parkour co-inventor Sebastian Foucan as the ridiculously agile bombmaker.