Bond films have a great tradition of doing things "for real", but when the impractical becomes impossible, the special effects wizards are drafted in. MI6 has the behind the scenes story...

Digital Illusions - The Computer Effects Used In "Die Another Day"
22nd October 2002

The Bond films are renowned within the movie industry for their real live action stunts, where stuntmen put their lives on the line - not mannequins or pixels.

Over the last 40 years, since Bond made his first appearance on the silver screen, movie technology has developed at a pace only surpassed by the NASA space programme. A further pinch on the stunt man's future within the Bond series comes from other blockbuster movies, now heavily reliant on computer generated imagery to satisfy their audiences with high octane, high danger action.

As the bar gets pushed higher and higher by the Hollywood action movie machine, the Bond series must invent increasingly implausible and dangerous stunts to keep the audience on the end of their seats. With the cost of performing ever more complex set-pieces for real spiralling, the danger is now the budget, rather than a stunt man's health.

So after 40 years of doing things the old fashioned way, "Die Another Day" will feature the first ever computer generated Bond surfs an icy tidal wave after Icarus destroys the glacier Bond was holding on to. The cost of performing the stunt for real was so high, not to mention to practicality, the producers turned to the world of pixels.

The Moving Picture Company were commissioned to produce the bulk of the computer generated imagery for "Die Another Day" - a film which has four times as many special effects as it's predecessor - "The World Is Not Enough" (600 compared to 150).

For the sequence where Bond swims underneath the ice, Pierce Brosnan was filmed in a water tank against a green-screen. Director Lee Tamahori had this stunt in mind for his 1997 movie "The Edge", but the production did not have the means to create it - so the idea is now brought to life with Bond. MPC had to add computer water bubbles and interactive lighting to plunge Bond into a realistic underwater environment. The resulting sequence is befitting of one of the film's rumoured working titles - "Beneath The Ice".

For the climatic ending to the film, Bond plummets from the sky in a stricken helicopter. To create the illusion, Pierce Brosnan was filmed in a jiggling helicopter against a blue-screen, and MPC later composited background plates and reflections. However, the biggest technical challenge was not creating the illusion of a tumbling helicopter, but avoiding the reflection of the camera crew in the helicopter windscreen. The sequence was filmed with a glass-free cockpit, and in post-production the the computer wizards added back the windscreen with moving reflections, light, clouds and burning debris.

Madonna's music video for the film was equally crammed with digital effects. To create the illusion of two Madonna's fighting each other, MPC used green-screen and digital compositing rather than traditional split screen methods. The producers of the video, Traktor, explained: “for various reasons there are effects in almost every shot. As with modern underwear the best effects are always the ones that don’t show through your slacks".

The film is now complete, and the producers await the reaction of the fans to the new digital Bond.