The boat sequence turned out to be easier than expected, according to Haug. The biggest shot occurs when Bond rams General Medrano's boat, which had to be done in multiple parts. Photo credit: Susie Allnutt.

The boat sequence also included some CG shots where Bond on a motorbike crashes through loads of CG wooden packing crates, and then lands on a CG boat deck, which Machine rebuilt to make the stunt look more dangerous. He then jumps over onto a second boat, which Machine also rebuilt again to add to the stunt. It was also a big rig removal and cleanup effort, and a head replacement for the stuntman. There were other complex comps with CG enhancement such as boats crashing into one another, throwing Bond into the boat, which required matching up three different plates of live action, bluescreen boat and stuntman being hit and warping the various elements to tie it all together and make it seamless. CG objects were added to the boat to tie in continuity and make the shot a bit more dynamic. There were many other head/face replacements in this sequence, as well as bullet hits, debris, etc. Machine used a mixture of off-the-shelf tools (Shake, Maya and RenderMan for Maya, Matchmover Pro, Photoshop and Combustion) that have been customized here, plus some in-house scripts.

Meanwhile, the early Siena foot chase, in which Bond pursues an MI6 traitor, which culminates with both of them falling through the roof of a gallery and then fighting on scaffolding, was handled by Framestore (supervised by Jon Thum). This turned out to be more complicated than expected.

Handled by Framestore, the Siena foot chase was more complicated than expected. It culminates with Bond and a traitor falling through the roof of a gallery and then fighting on scaffolding.

"The floor shot where they crash was supposed to be so simple," Haug admits. "It was 90% stunt and 10% help. And it turned into this monster. There were four parts to it and you're only looking at three of them. The final part, where the stunt man was to turn into Daniel, didn't end up happening because the stuntman ended up falling off the scaffolding and just managed to catch himself, and Marc liked it so much that we changed the whole choreography to stick with that. So the fourth part with Daniel got dumped, beginning with him falling. Daniel's willing to get on a rig and do anything. The only thing he didn't do in that sequence was actually going through the glass. That had more to do with scheduling. I think he was already off in another country when we did it. We learned from previs that the art gallery set, which filled the 007 Stage at Pinewood, wasn't big enough. Marc kept saying that it didn't work for him: it was too close to the ground, they should just slide down the rope, jump off and run out of the building. Then we would have to continue the sequence back out on the streets of Siena again, and nobody wanted that. So we ended up having to make it 50 feet taller, so that when you were all the way on the bottom you still had a long way to go. And clearly you weren't going to make it, so you didn't want to let go. We put it on the side of a hill so it looked taller when you approached it."

Finally, the opening, pre-credit car chase in Lake Garda, Italy, was handled by Double Negative as well. Wuttke supervised the shoot, which covered all the exteriors and some practical interiors with a stunt driver. The chase travels the ground from Lake Guarda to its culmination at the Carrera marble quarry. The majority of the exterior work was filmed from remote camera positions and in up to half the material there were many fixes required, including removing up to five or six cameras, crew members, a stunt rig, while also adding damage to the Aston Martin and a face replacement on the stunt driver. Windscreens were taken out for the shoot, so these were later replaced with CG windows, which needed appropriate reflections and also CG shattered and damaged windows where appropriate in the sequence. The cut changed regularly during the editing, which meant that the team was often called on to remove cars at certain times and add dirt and dust to other cars as they were edited in later in the sequence.

Practical interiors also included replacing the rear view mirror with bluescreen elements of Craig, who was not available during the shoot. These elements were all shot at Pinewood where the Aston Martin, the Alfa Romeo and a large truck included in the action were mounted on a big trolley and shot against bluescreen. Due to the enormous stage required there were many areas were the bluescreen was not applied and a great deal of roto work was needed to make the shots work in the composites.

It was critical to get the camera height and framing all exactly right or it would be impossible to make the shot look real. The interior was an extremely technical shoot and there were many variables -- the set lighting was set to match the plates as closely as possible -- but even so, a big part of the post job was to re-light the shots in order to assist the integration.

"It's an odd way to work," Haug admits, "usually you shoot foreground first to get the right angle on the actor and you let the actor drive the background. In this case, the background drove the shots of the actor. Luckily, in a car shoot that's pretty easy to know that's going to be a good angle."

Bill Desowitz is the senior editor of VFXWorld and AWN.