Empire UK

most complicated one by a long way.”

Empire asks what he’s enjoyed the most

about it. “I enjoy it when they’re over”

he half-jokes. “I sometimes wonder why

I put myself through the pain. All the

action stuff was stacked up to the end.

So one day we’ll do the big explosion

(actually the biggest yet captured on

film shot in Morocco). The next day it

was the collapsing building. The next

day it was a helicopter crashing. Every

day was huge.” At one point he admits

he and his team went to Sam Mendes

and voiced a concern that they wouldn’t

be able to pull it all off. Deadlines were

too tight. “Would you consider a CGI

option?” they asked.

“Sam looked at me aghast”

Corbould chuckles. “He said ‘Chris.

This is a Bond film. We do it for real.’ So

we did it for real. And we pulled it off.”

HRIS CORBOULD IS

the oldest of five siblings.

Each followed him into

the special effects business

(see sidebar page 101).

Empire confesses to having visions

of the Corbould kids blowing up the

playhouse together or gleefully

throwing firecrackers at each other.

“Nah” he says bemused by such

fancifulness. It’s not even like they came

from a particularly movie-obsessed

household. “I’d love to be romantic

and say we went to the cinema twice

a week but the interest really came

once we started working on them.”

It was actually his love of music

specifically The Who that pulled

him into the business. At 16 he took a

summer job as a special effects assistant

on a rock-opera movie his favourite band

was making Tommy. He loved every

minute quit school and began a vocation

that would lead via The Sweeney The

Professionals and The Benny Hill Show

to him becoming one of the world’s

leading practical effects men.

His passion for The Who has barely

dwindled something that tickles Sam

Mendes. Every time Corbould cuts

together presentations of his sequences

for the director he’ll make them his

backing music. “I did a pre-viz for the

end sequence on Skyfall” Corbould

says “the whole helicopter attack. And

I overlaid The Real Me over the top of

it... It’s a bit of a standing joke between

me and Sam.” You wonder if he harbours

a secret wish that they’ll make it onto

the Spectre soundtrack.

Corbould is very much the

archetypal Brit crewman: dependable

unflappable unpretentious and as you’d

expect practically minded. He doesn’t

do hyperbole doesn’t talk the talk just

gets straight down to the nuts and bolts

of things. He’s not a showman but boy

can he put on a good show. Need an

action sequence punched up to a whole

new level? He’s your man.

Like the time Mendes called him

while he was finishing up on The Dark

Knight Rises in Los Angeles. “Chris

I’ve got this big chase during an

Underground sequence” said the

director. “I need a real jaw-dropping

moment that will break it up. Can you

have a think?” Corbould’s cogs started

whirring then at 2am he woke up in

bed with the answer: “A Tube train.

Yeah. You’ve seen trains crashing before

but you’ve never seen an Underground

train crash through [a tunnel]. It would

be the last thing you would expect.”

Mendes loved it as did the Bond

producers. Then Corbould got back

to Blighty and one of his engineers

approached. Did he know how big

Tube trains are? How heavy? He soon

found out. “It’s something like 38 tons”

Corbould says. Per carriage. And the

stunt required two. “He said ‘We can’t

do it.’” Of course they did do it — “We

ended up building a lightweight version

of the Tube train” — and pulled off

Skyfall’s biggest stunt.

There’s a distinct rhythm to

Corbould’s anecdotes: the big idea

the bigger vision the declaration

of impossibility then the ultimate

triumph — without resorting to CGI.

Bond after all does it for real. As does

Nolan. But very rarely it’s Corbould

himself who announces it can’t be done.

Like the time Nolan prepping The

Dark Knight told him he wanted to

flip an entire articulated lorry trailer

and all. “I was nervous we were never

gonna pull that off.”

So Corbould did what any of us do

when faced with a big worrying work

project: he put it off hoped it would go

away. “Then it got to a stage where we

either had to do it or not.” So he voiced

his concerns. Nolan still wanted to do

it. Corbould suggested just flipping the

trailer over the cab. Nolan said that

wouldn’t look as good. Corbould asked

“Would you mind if we made it a shorter

truck?” Nolan said “I really likethis

truck Chris.” The phrase he uses to

describe Nolan is “quite insistent”.

So he cut a deal: he’d go away and

do a test and if he had any misgivings

they’d have to it with miniatures. So test

it they did out on a runway. “Massive

great spikes” shot down from the cab into

the ground forming a pivot as the

“The audience

get a thrill from

knowing how it

was achieved.”

CHRIS CORBOULD H