Been clearing my attic
OldVFXGuy
Posts: 4MI6 Agent
I worked on 3 bond movies and have just found a script for one movie, my notes for another and my VFX backups. I’m unsure about how to go about getting these appraised, the legalities of sale/copyright ownership (i don’t have my original contract and i doubt Eon do). I would be grateful for advice. I know i have been vague but the enquiry is genuine… Thanks.
Comments
I can give quite a narrative as to my involvement from start to end of one particular film with some backgrounds and on screen factual details which demonstrate my authenticity.
I don’t think EON are that bothered unless you utilise items to own advantage like making a hundred copies and selling on. Original items come up all the time for auction. Props can end up in bin so even googling Bond memorabilia will find you Auction house to handle/advise.
I’ve got some Goldeneye stuff that the seller asked me not to make a big deal of as they were heavily involved.
Try and ask EON anything and they’re just not interested.
Sounds like you have some great memories…. They can’t take them away. 99.9% of people on this forum would love the chance to be ‘involved’ with a film.
I did some charity work using original Bond merchandise, can’t see EON getting all heavy about it.
All the best
Andy
Certainly I and I’m sure lots of others would love to hear your story, not because you have to prove any authenticity but just because it sounds very interesting! :)
This was an interesting briefing with a mention of two Bond movies at 15:50 or so...
https://youtu.be/81qrUNTHsWI?si=jyf3qOMXCPQjO2z1&t=950
And thank you 00Stirl and Emtiem for that helpful info and reassurance.
So I worked on Goldeneye, a little on Tomorrow never dies and a little on The World is not Enough. I'm only credited for Goldeneye though. My involvement was on set graphics so whenever any character, Bond, Boris, Natalya, M interacted with a screen then my team and I created the graphics and wrote the software to make it work.
The connection came through an old contact of my boss at the time Peter Duffield and through his old boss Dick Hewitt. Dick had a long career in films, he was more known for explosions and practical effects making and firing 'arrow canons' for war scenes in historical films but the first movie I worked for him on was about the Iraqi Supergun where we worked on the 3D reconstruction of the gun. Pretty rudimentary back then we had to lay it back to Betacam tape frame by frame for it to be edited into the TV show.
Dick won the contract for the onsite equipment and control systems to drive the onset graphics for Goldeneye. Unfortunately he came up with an old school system that used VHS cassette players to drive all the screens with a projector for the main screen. The control system for this was not good and so it kept going out of sync, and the repetition meant the tapes wore out causing artefacts on screen, this and some other unfortunate comms and other playback issues resulted in him no longer working on the movie.
Justin Owen of Useful companies, now UCNS, parachuted in and did a fantastic job of installing, running and coordinating all the hardware. They used Dataton for screen synchronisation and triggering multiple sources such as video decks and our computers. I wrote the software to take the triggers and play the graphic sequences and my team did the onset graphics. We came out of 'corporate theatre' and so these graphics were our bread and butter. The only graphics set which I wasn't involved in was the scene where Natalya was seen on satellite crawling away from the dish after the MIG crash. This was done by a really talented boutique VFX house in London, owned by Christian Hogue, in Flame.
From memory the scenes included:
Sevrenaya: The password and satellite screens (ran off video tape or live typing where pressing the keys trigger the right characters to be typed)
Natalya's password guessing scene: I was getting to grips with morphing software for this and my first efforts, on a real model were not used because they may have affected the PG certificate. Eventually Jim Staines the computer screen storyboard artist did an illustration of Natalya in a bikini which could be acceptably morphed in the right places without being too revealing.
MI6: The video wall showing the explosion
The train: Showing the 'spike' screen
The helicopter: Where the missiles are tracked going out and returning (and the little radar screen in there).
The reveal of Ouromov's profile at MI6.
Arecibo: Everything that happens on set under the dish. There was a 66 screen video wall sponsored by Panasonic (we had 11 sources to drive that), 60 screens out on the floor (looping graphics), 6 screens in the control room (bank transfer and Boris screens) and 8 video screens in the control room (those last 8 were playing video triggered by Useful). And the screen where Natalya manages to encrypt the satellite.
The whole final sequence ran for the last 23 minutes of the movie and often we would have to locate to the beginning of a scene to shoot another take which was the genius of the Dataton control system and software integration we did. It was robust and meant we could jump all the visuals around on set as needed.
So one factoid I can give to verify all this is that the scenes with screens on were shot at 25fps because the film cameras could be synced to PAL and then the video and computer screens were all synced to this. If you watch the pan across the Arecibo control centre you will see a double image on the screens. This is because the video screens were refreshing twice for every film frame (remember interlaced video) and the computer graphics screens were just running at 50hz synced to the 25fps rate for the film. I found a company called graphics unlimited who made a graphics card where all the components were modifiable. Useful and I spoke with the owner and he modified the card to take the 25hz clock sync. However it caused interference so I soldered the lids of his tobacco tins onto the cards to act as an RF shield which worked.
I am sure there are others. AMA.
Oh wow that's fantastic- what a great film to be creating onscreen graphics for as it's so computer-heavy. That's a very interesting read, thank you.