The hotel room is a set built at Pinewood Studios in the U.K. A Steadicam picks up the actors, following them through the lobby and into and up an elevator. A transition occurs when Bond and the woman enter the hotel, which is actually on a different street. The first shot was lensed with a Technocrane, which creating the establishing shot, then lowered the camera and zoomed in to follow the actors. It was accomplished with several meticulously choreographed long takes edited together with shrewdly placed wipes and a smattering of CG (though Hoytema insists there are no fully CG shots in the sequence).
This is explained by the movie's cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema in a short Hollywood Reporter article, which briefly lists the various different separate takes and how they were done each: In fact it didn't even all take place in Mexico City but also partly in Pinewood Studios London. But I can't help wonder if they really did it in one shot, transitioning from quadcopter to steadicam and back for the shot?Īs it turns out, it was expectedly not a single shot, but skilled editing of multiple continous tracking shots, some done with steadicam and some done with cranes (and a little bit of CGI). I suppose with a $200+ million budget, they would think nothing of post-producing a montage of shots into a smooth, continuous flow.
Bond walks several blocks on rooftops past the camera until he gets to his vantage point across from a building full of bad guys. The camera climbs now evidently flying as there are openings several stories high below it.Bond climbs out the window and the camera follows through the window, then leads as he walks along old building ledges, etc.The couple takes off masks, there is some conversation between them as the woman goes into the bathroom and comes back to find, now clearly Bond, in street clothes with an equipment case.The camera follows them in (oddly closing the door for them as neither of them do). The couple follows the camera then transitions to walking ahead a few steps to a room, open it, and walk through.
Cinema, animation, uncanny, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Lacan Abstract