Directed by Sam Mendes, Spectre is the twenty-fourth film in the legendary James Bond franchise. For the opening chase through Mexico City during the Día de los Muerto festival, ILM’s team led by visual effects supervisor, Mark Bakowski, combined special effects elements of a section of the building being destroyed that had been created by SFX supervisor Chris Corbould and his team of technicians with a massive digital explosion that toppled down atop Bond himself. Chasing his nemesis, Sciarra, through the parade, Bond joins him on a waiting helicopter where a fist fight over Zócalo square ensues. To create the dramatic chase sequence, the visual effects team had to painstakingly stitch together plates to create a seamless flow from Mexico City to Pinewood Studios and back several times throughout the course of the action-packed sequence.
Daniel Craig had earlier injured his knee during the production and could not perform every part of the sequence – this necessitated the use of stuntmen and therefore ILM head replacements and digi-doubles.
In addition to the stitches, we performed extensive clean-up to parts of the Día de los Muerto parade. There were thousands of extras so it was a challenge to capture the perfect shot because someone is always looking at the camera so beyond stitching everything together and adding crowds, there was a lot of work fixing faces and putting masks and sunglasses on people.
