There’s plenty of rollicking action in Casino Royale, but the parkour chase is the movie’s mic-drop moment, the definitive announcement that the 007 franchise will no longer have its milkshake slurped by James Cameron or Tom Cruise or anyone else. Yesterday, Nick Rheinwald-Jones explained how the surprisingly restrained opening credit sequence of Casino Royale set the tone for the entire film in Part 1. In reality the building that is in place of the crumbling structure is the Lion Morosini Palace, currently an elegant B&B. In essence, the entire action scene is meant to establish Bond's reckless streak and complete disregard for the rules of engagement. The sequence reaches new heights (literally!) when both end up climbing the skeleton of the building, punctuated by explosions, mass mayhem, and a particularly daring move that sees Bond and Mollaka suspended hundreds of feet in the air for a dizzying and brutal hand-to-hand fight. The stunts, the choreography, the camerawork, and the propulsive score by David Arnold (with a crucial assist by Chris Cornell's theme song "You Know My Name," which is directly incorporated into the original score) all work together to create a short film of sorts that stands out as arguably the purest distillation of Craig's take on the character. (Welcome to Best Action Scene Ever, a column dedicated to breaking down the best, most effective action sequences throughout the genre. In this edition, we look back at the birth of a new Bond in the opening moments of 2006's "Casino Royale.") Then, for the Madagascar sequence, we wanted a color-rich grade that would suggest the heat and dust of a tropical island. We really pushed the highlights, making the scene very grainy and gritty. Every time the set sank, more of the lights came into the field of view of each skylight, so even though it dropped 20 feet, the amount of light inside hardly varied. Méheux had to take into consideration that the set would drop some 20′ over the course of the scene, effectively lowering the light level. We couldn’t light from a lot of the windows anyway, because once that part of the house goes underwater, your light source is underwater too. "I’m a big believer in the notion that it’s better to augment something real with digital effects than try to fabricate a whole scene or an entire object," says Begg. One such sequence is set at Miami airport, where villains attempt to destroy a new jumbo jet and an errant 747 takes out a police car. We built the whole set of stairs onstage at Barandov, and on each level, a doorway and window appeared to be leading to a corridor. "The bad guys attack Bond and then they all go down four flights of stairs, throwing themselves over banisters and such. "It’s much more immediate and horrible when you get the camera right in there," says Campbell of the handheld work. Martin does a lot of takes and there’s always something a little different from take to take. I’ve worked on four pictures with Martin Campbell, starting with Goldeneye, and even there we did a lot less handheld work. Kodak’s newer 500-speed stock, Vision2 5218, was available, but Méheux says he preferred 5279 because he had been somewhat disappointed with the final colors rendered by 5218 in The Legend of Zorro. "I don’t like to use a lot of stocks because it confuses me and everyone else," he declares. 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 speeds, because I think that can be a big giveaway with water. I warned everyone that it would come out a funny color on film, but I knew I could pull out some of the color in the DI to make it look more like white light." Some of the action sequences combine stunt work, digital effects, and traditional 3-D models. Those shots take a lot of time; you put wire rigs up and cranes to hold people in the air, and that takes forever. Nicholas Knight again shows precision in replicating the angle used in the original movie. Great location pic from Nicholas Knight (one of many excellent images that he took) Nicholas Knight gets another pretty much perfect location angle. He also points out that you'd likely need something like a crane to replicate the exact angle from the movie. Hamilton McMurray snapped a great now shot of this location. Several of these updated location images from Nicholas Knight looks like they were taken just after the crew stopped filming! Today is Part 2, where we make the case that the landmark parkour sequence is the film’s mic-drop moment. In celebration of the the tenth anniversary of the release of Casino Royale —now available to stream on Showtime and Showtime Anytime— we’re presenting a three-part series as to why it is the best film in the entire James Bond canon. A great angle for the awesome line delivery at the end of the movie. Daniel Craig delivers the iconic character introduction in the grounds of Villa Gaeta, Lake Como, Lombardia, Italy. Not quite as sunny as when the Casino Royale production team were there, but Nicolas Knight still grabbed a decent 'now' location image. Mr White gets out of his car with the stunning water of Lake Como, Lombardia, Italy behind. It is a little way up the coast and north of the location of the hospital where Bond was recovering earlier in the film.
