It’s been three years since the last James Bond film Spectre was released, but did you know it holds the Guinness World Record for the largest film stunt explosion ever in cinematic history?
The shot was conceived by Chris Corbould, who has been Special Effects Supervisor on every Bond movie since 1995’s Goldeneye, having begun as an assistant on 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me.
His impressive CV includes Star Wars films The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, the Dark Knight trilogy and Inception – the latter of which he won an Oscar for.
Over his career on Bond there have been a number of one-take only stunts, including the Underground train in Skyfall and blowing up the lair at the end of Goldeneye.
However undertaking Spectre’s explosion of Blofeld’s Moroccan desert lair, which was actually three times bigger than what was captured on film, was a particular challenge due to its size, and something that Craig was a little nervous about getting his one shot at the scene right.
Speaking at the opening of 007 ELEMENTS, a new Bond Cinematic Installation in Austria, Chris said: “Originally there was this great big underground lair and the computer guys kept showing concepts of this great big cavern opening up.
“They showed us two or three versions of this concept and in the end Sam [Mendes, director] said, ‘I’m not buying this. It’s not Bond.
“So I said to him, ‘Sam, I can do an explosion that will blow you away.’
The Special Effects Supervisor continued: “[He agreed and] I knew what the whole layout of the baddie’s complex was, so I designed this whole series of explosions. Sam only shot it on three cameras, the temptation is to shoot it on fifteen.”
“But he only used one, when Daniel comes up with Lea and it all goes off.
“Funny thing about that is we used a fairly new technology that initiated all the explosives.
“Normally you run a wire to each explosion, and bare in mind there were 200 explosions in there, but we used this new technology that uses a computerised initiation.
“So each detonator you programme it. The good side is you only run one wire around the whole circuit. The down side is when you push the button there’s a three second delay where all these detonators say ‘I’m ready’ to each other.”
When Craig arrived on the Moroccan set, there was quite the pressure to get the scene exactly right. After all, they only had one shot.
Chris added: “So when Daniel came up I said, ‘This is going to be spectacular, but there is a problem with this.’ He said, ‘What’s that?’
“I said, ‘We’ve got to press the button before you’ve said the end of your line. He said, ‘What do you mean?’
“I said, ‘Well I’m not going to go into the technicalities here, but you’d just better get your line right alright otherwise we’re in deep s***.’
“Anyhow we did lots of tests. Y’know we wouldn’t let the whole lot off; just a couple of sample ones so he could get used to it. But it did freak him out for a minute.”
007 ELEMENTS is now open to public and tickets can be purchased here.
