SPECTRE, SAM MENDES’ second 007 film
followingSkyfall, sets out its stall with a ballsy,
bravura pre-credits sequence taking place during
Mexico’s Day Of The Dead festival, a celebration
honouring the journey from life to death. As well
as providing the kind of window on an exotic
world Bond films are famous for, it plays into
the heart of the film’s story: Bond being haunted
by a figure from his past — Franz Oberhauser/
Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) — he long thought
dead. The sequence takes in a collapsing building
and a helicopter dust-up, but begins, like a dry
run for 1917 , with one continuous shot following
Bond (Daniel Craig) tracking an assassin
through the Mexico City streets.
THE LONG WALK
After a title card announces “The dead are alive”,
Spectreopens with Bond (Daniel Craig) moving
through the crowds, into a hotel, up in a lift,
into a bedroom, out onto a balcony and across
rooftops — all seemingly in one take.
Sam Mendes (director):The one-shot opening
was something I had in my mind very early on.
It partly came from feeling that one of the things
inSkyfallI could have done better were the
first ten minutes. I’m very proud of the movie,
but I did feel the opening didn’t have any shifts
of rhythm — it was just a frenetic chase. In
Mexico I wanted it to be ten minutes of real
time, and l wanted audiences to feel like they
were in Bond’s shoes.
Lee Smith (editor):I think the initial
conversation was that this was going to be the
greatest opening to a Bond fi lm ever.
Steve Begg (visual eff ects supervisor): The
opening sequence is made up of six shots. When
you want to join all these shots together, you’ve
got to make sure that the end of the outgoing
shot, near as dammit, has to match the incoming
shot so you can dovetail the two together.
Mendes:I thought a lot about Touch Of Evil,
and I thought about the inevitable GoodFellas
moment. The journey of the Steadicam in that
is so spectacular.
Begg:What was tricky [about the fi rst part of
the sequence] was the fact that it was calm.
It wasn’t like an action sequence with stuff
crashing through frame and stuff like that.
Everything had to be gently blended together.
Smith:It has to be fl uid perfection. The camera
can be slightly off , the horizon could shift, the
light could change. There’s a billion ways you
could fuck this up.
Dennis Gassner (production designer): It
was about where we make the blend points. For
instance, we designed the poster for the festival
as they enter the hotel to catch the eye — and
that became the blend point into the next shot.
Begg:We were really lucky that Daniel was
wearing that skeleton suit, because you could
see if it misaligned from shot to shot.
Jany Temime (costume designer): I made
two different costumes for Daniel. The fi rst one,
based on Mexican folklore, was a poncho with
some death elements in it, but I think Bond
should always look like a gentleman. So we tried
a coat and top hat and immediately that was
better. That was a 007 silhouette.Begg: You go into the hotel room with him,
which was a Pinewood set. His girlfriend
[Stephanie Sigman] jumps onto the bed and
the camera whip-pans around onto him.
There’s another wipe within the pan and he’s
in his regular James Bond suit.
Temime: I chose a blue Tom Ford suit because
I wanted a contrast with the black; a very light
fabric because he had to run and jump. The
usual story.THE EXPLOSION
The one-shot ends as Bond takes aim at assassin
Marco Sciarra (Alessandro Cremona) in a
building opposite, shooting Sciarra’s briefcase,
which causes an explosion that destroys the
hotel and the roof 007 is standing on.Mendes: I remember thinking, “Wouldn’t it
be cool if we could do the opening sequence of
a Bond movie with no cuts?” But it got to the
point where it got self-serving stylistically and
I needed to cut. I wanted the energy of editing.
Begg: Bond starts to head to the balcony window
and as he walks through it we have another wipe
into the Mexican location — a wide shot where
we are tracking with him along this rooftop.
Originally, he was meant to run along, but Daniel
hurt his knee and said, “What if I saunter along?”
It was actually better.
Gassner: [We used] a Supertechno crane,
about 300 feet long. We had the key to the city
and we were able to negotiate fi ve rooftops. It
was one of the biggest tracks the camera crew
had ever done.Left: “One of
the biggest
tracks the
crew had ever
done...” Bond
saunters
into position
to take aim
at Sciarra.
Right, top to
bottom: A set
at Pinewood
Studios,
doubling as
a Mexico City
apartment
block, is blown
up; Bond
strides
towards the
Sciarra-
transporting
’copter.