All of these movies have two things in common
amazing jaw-dropping special effects,
and the man responsible for them.
We sat down with special effects wizard Chris Corbould
who explained his role in designing and executing these moments
with behind-the-scenes secrets of some of his greatest work.
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"- Saved by the bell."
- You've probably heard the term special effects
and visual effects used interchangeably,
but there is a crucial distinction between them.
Visual effects are anything done after production has wrapped.
This is CGI, motion capture, compositing.
Special effects on the other hand are done during production.
This includes elements like rain,
prosthetics, explosions, car chases, and more.
Chris Corbould's career in special effects goes back decades,
working in blockbuster franchises, like "Star Wars",
"James Bond", and "The Dark Knight" Trilogy.
But what exactly does a special effects supervisor do?
" - 3! 2! 1! Action!"
- The role of a special effects supervisor is obviously to design,
collaborate with the director, the production designers, the stunt personnel.
To achieve what is in the written word of the script.
Probably 70% of what we do in special effects is engineering,
whether it be rotating hallways, it can be sinking houses in "Casino Royale".
Two trains crashing from the ceiling in "Skyfall".
Engineering is a major part in what we do.
Above that is to come up with all ideas to improve the script.
Not make it different, make it more spectacular, make it more challenging.
In "Goldeneye" the tank chase was originally a motorbike chase.
I was called in to see Martin Campbell, Barbara Broccoli, and Michael Wilson.
And they said to me, 'Chris, we're not really happy with the bike chase.
Well, how can we make it different?'
I said, 'Ged rid of it'.
There's been lots of bike chases so they say, 'Well, what can you come up with?'
And I said, 'Well, they're in a military camp.
Why doesn't he take a tank?'
And that's how that whole scene started off.
"- Faster!"
- I think it's the special effects
supervisor's job to come up with these ideas.
- For "Skyfall" Corbould's task was to devise a thrilling conclusion
to an underground chase sequence.
- I got a call from Sam Mendez one afternoon and he said,
Chris, I've got this wonderful underground foot chase cabins and metro trains.
He said, but I want one jaw-dropping moment just to bring it all to a stop.
So he said, what can you come up with?
And I thought, well, they are in the underground.
Why don't we have a subway train crashing in through the scene
and that's how that whole sequence evolved and I pitched it to Sam.
He loved it.
And then we sat about designing it.
There was some talk.
We probably could have done it as a miniature.
At one stage there was a lot of dialogue after the train crash.
So we'd had to dress in a full size train in the crash position.
So I pitched it and we shot the whole thing,
full-size, and do it for real, which everybody agreed.
So then, you know, I got together with my engineering team.
We came up with a methodology of an overhead monorail if you like.
So the train was actually hanging an overhead track
that went from one corner,
the 007 stage to the other corner in Pinewood Studios.
And we hold two carriages where my initial thoughts was
just to go and buy two out-of-date railway carriages
until one of my engineers mentioned that they were 65 tons each.
So we decided to make our own, so we made our own two carriages
which still came in at 5 ton each.
We then had to devise how we drove it into the set.
So we had a cable system with a tractor unit outside the stage,
going through a series of pulleys, which pulled the train in about 30 miles an hour.
And I walked around with Roger Deakins the lighting camera on it.
And we'd discuss where to put cameras.
Something like 10 or 12, I think.
Probably the biggest challenge was stopping it.
Because 10 ton coming in at 30 miles an hour and we had to stop it pretty quick
before it went out the other end of the stage.
We had about 50 tons of sandbags right at the very end zone
so we just plowed into it and stopped it, stopped it dead.
But the whole set was a collaboration between
the art department, construction, ourselves.
I didn't want it just to hit the floor and it skid along the floor.
We need to plow the floor ups,
so all the floor was built over a weak material.
Was up to about a foot in depth.
There was lightweight pillars that it went through.
Everything it hit was a showed total destruction.
So it was a collaboration between all those departments for their success in that.
It was a one-off really.
To do it a second time probably would have been
months and months and months of redoing the set.
So we had to run it the first time and we did.
And it was a wonderful shot.
You might not know it, but you might not even see it if you bring your eyes,
but I was the train driver.
I was doing some second unit on that
and Sam sent me to shoot some green screen of the train driver.
And he said, 'It's not quite working. You be the train driver'.
So in a split second, I am the train driver coming in there.
- In "No Time to Die", Corbould explains how they shot
an explosive chase in a centuries-old Italian city.
The first thing is obviously the script and the script called for a James Bond.
If you seen the film, he's retired.
And because he was retired historically James Bond's personal car is the DB5.
So I had to go to Aston Martin.
We've looked at the options.
We came up with the idea that Aston Martin would supply their production
to the beauty shots of the car,
pulling up Daniel, getting in and out of the car, and the car pulling away.
And then Aston Martin built eight replicas.
On top of two of those, we put the driving pod,
so we can have a British Rally Champion
Mark Higgins driving the car from a pod on the roof
so that we can have cameras looking in at Daniel and Léa,
as it was driving 70 miles an hour after the streets.
Ain't like a greenscreen shot.
You got the way where their eyes were looking,
the G-forces of when they were going around corners,
what their body would actually do.
We also built two fully kitted out with all the gadgets.
Obviously, the spikes, the little bombs that's coming out,
smoke screen, the guns coming out the front.
We had a lot of fun with that mini gun.
One of the things we had to take into consideration,
we shot sequence in Matera,
which is a thousands of year old historic town in Italy.
And then the final sequence where it's in the square and it doughnuts round
then there's an 800-year-old church there.
And everything from three-foot down was dressed in with all the bullet impacts in,
and everything above that three-foot was originally a hundred-year-old church.
The car actually did a 360 and Daniel actually did a 360 in it.
We locked the front where we use it as a pivot.
Most of that was done for real.
And one of the hardest bits was lining up the bullet impacts
so that they lined up with the actual guns.
So we divided the circle into eight segments
and had the control boxes of, I think 25 Hits.
There was lots of invisible visual effects in there.
Whenever the cars were screeching around corner,
especially in the Doughnut Square, they were leaving black tire marks on the road.
So we couldn't wait each time for them to
cleaned cause that was a two-hour job each time.
So they painted a lot of those out.
They put a total digital car, the first car that got taken out by the bomblets,
they realized that he needed to have that way block to make him turn the corner.
So they put in a total CG car that got hit by the bomb.
They did lots of stuff that way.
Where the motorbike goes up the ramp does that big jump.
They made the ramp look like a piece of architecture, like a (inaudible).
They painted out our driver in the driving part,
they painted him out a couple of times.
So there's lots of invisible visual effects, which
I think really enhance the whole sequence.
It was a fun, fun shoot.
And a lot of the successes of that sequence depended on
the collaboration with the townsfolk and the councils.
And they really took us to their hearts and had a great time.
- With the "Dark Knight" Trilogy Corbould created practical effects
that helped keep Christopher Nolan's vision of Gotham City as realistic as possible.
The flying Bat was...
I must admit when I first read it in the script I was very, very disappointed.
Because up until then, we've made a real Batmobile that could do everything.
We made a real Batbike.
And all of a sudden, we've got this flying Bat.
My first discussion was with Chris and I said to Chris,
'Chris, I don't get this. We've done everything for real up to now.
And now you use this flying Bat.
But it's coming of CGI.
So he said, 'Well, let's talk about it.'
So we sat down and we went through the scenes.
First of all, there was the static Bat when they first see it.
Well, that had to be a real build.
So we built a real Bat, actually built two of them.
And then we started talking about scene by scene
where it first comes out the alleyway.
It was CG and was that real.
And I said, 'Well, I think we can do that one on a zipline'
which is what we did.
We had two big cranes, each end zip line.
We pulled the Bat out of the alleyway over the police cars.
There were other scenes, you know, as we started going through it,
I thought this actually is going to be fun.
We mounted the Bat on a vehicle that could go 60 mile an hour through the streets
and go up, down, tilt left, tilt right,
tilt forward, tilt back.
The CGI guys painted out the vehicles.
So we've got a lot of value out of that when it was chasing the convoy.
After a while, I was converted.
So I think in some ways that Chris was really clever.
From being very despondent about having a digital flying Bat,
we probably achieved over 50% of what was shown in the film.
So it worked out really well.
- This dedication to practical effects included
the challenge of flipping an entire semi-truck end over end.
- Chris thinks big. Everything he does is big.
When we flip the truck in "Dark Night" I wasn't sure we could do that.
So I tried softening Chris up a little bit by asking him
if maybe we just flipped the trailer unit and left the tractor unit flat.
He didn't want to do that.
And then I tried working on it until we've made it
a shorter truck and not an 18 Wheeler.
And he didn't really want that.
In the end I said, 'Look, Chris, how do you do? I'm gonna go -- do a test site.
And if I can't get it over, then we have to think of plan B
whether it'd be a miniature
probably would have been a miniature.
We went to the test site, the guy hit the button and it flew over.
We had two great big teeth in the front.
So as soon as the back lift off the ground, these teeth right dug into the ground
and formed a natural hinge.
Cause what we are worried about is that as soon as it lifted off,
it just moved forward and we lost our momentum.
So I thought we cracked it.
And then Chris wanted to do the shot in the main banking district.
We went down the street and then I was walking down
all I could see was (inaudible) in the road.
And then all the way along the road, it was underground volts, utility services.
There was only two places on the whole road where we could actually do the shot.
We're ready to do it.
And we started pressurizing the big nitrogen cyclinders in the back.
I said, 'Chris, are we ready?'
So, he said, 'You're coming down to camera?'
I said, 'No, I'm staying here'.
So we called action and we sent the truck off on its way.
And then I thought to myself, there's going to be two outcomes here.
There's going to be the loud whoosh of the cannon going off
sort of a little bit of quiet
and then the sound of a lot of breaking of glass and deadly silence.
Well, it's going to be a loud whoosh of the cannon going off, a bit of a silence,
a crash, and then the round of applause.
Luckily enough, it was the second one.
So it was a total success.
- When you hear the term 'movie magic',
this is what they mean.
Despite the endless applications of CGI,
there's nothing quite like the real thing.
So the next time you see something like this,
remember that there are creative and technical wizards
like Chris Corbould making it all happen.
No matter if you're working with blockbusters, low-budget indies,
all special effects, require planning and coordination,
which is where StudioBinder comes in.
Follow the link below to sign up for free
and start prepping your next special effects showstopper.
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You won't want to miss who we interviewed next.
Until next time.
Remember the following mantra
When in doubt, use a tank.