OTHER ARTICLES 1. Production Information 2. “If you don’t get bruised playing Bond, you’re not doing it properly.” – Daniel Craig 3. “Vesper is not the classic Bond girl, wearing a bikini and firing guns.” – Eva Green 4. “He’s ice cold.” — Mads Mikkelsen 5. “I’m drunk with power.” — Judi Dench 6. “She has great sex. Then he’s gone!” — Caterina Murino 7. “It is a great story and a great thriller.” — Ivana Milicevic 8. “Life is made of obstacles and challenges.” — Sébastien Foucan 9. “A different Bond in every way.” – Martin Campbell 10. “CASINO ROYALE will be a classic Bond.” – Michael G. Wilson 11. “Because of Daniel’s more muscular physique, the evening suit is a new shape.” — Lindy Hemming 12. “Bond literally brings the house down ’round about him.” — Peter Lamont 13. “I spent eight hours a day in the water and two hours underwater.” — Chris Corbould 14. Locations for Casino Royale

“Bond literally brings the house down ’round about him.”
— Peter Lamont

Production designer Peter Lamont is no newcomer to the 007 franchise, having worked on 18 Bond films in various roles. For CASINO ROYALE he oversaw an art department spread over four countries – U.K., Czech Republic, Italy and the Bahamas – and the building of more than 40 sets. Not surprisingly, Lamont cites geography as his biggest logistical challenge. “Barrandov Studios in Prague was a good base of operations, with a great workforce and excellent sound stages, but we had to keep Martin Campbell up to date on all the other sets around the world.”

The most difficult set to create, says Lamont, was the interior of the Venetian house, where Bond follows Vesper and Gettler in an attempt to rescue Vesper. While the interior of the house and the piazza leading to it were built on the 007 stage at Pinewood Studios, the exterior of the house was shot in Venice, on the Grand Canal opposite the Rialto Market. Although the Venetian authorities were persuaded to permit the production to sink compression pipes into the canal to simulate water spouting as the house sank, and to stop normal canal traffic for short intervals of time, their generosity didn’t extend to allowing one of their grand palazzos to be destroyed and plunged into the canal. Instead, a model of the sinking house was constructed in the Paddock Tank at Pinewood.

“During the building process at Pinewood, the whole thing became more complicated, as the decision was taken that the house would not just sink vertically, but would need another axis to move the building from side to side as it sank. Chris Corbould and his special effects team built a fantastic rig for us.”

Other sets were also combinations of interior sets built in one location and exterior locations in another country. The first scene shot, the Nambutu Embassy chase, was at a set in a studio in Modrany, outside Prague. “It was complicated – Bond moves through the Embassy pursuing and capturing Mollaka, running along corridors and into offices and jumping out of a window into the compound, where he sets off a huge explosion. The beginning of that scene was shot later in the Bahamas, where he follows Mollaka to the Embassy from the building site.”

Another multiple set was that of the Casino Royale itself, situated in Montenegro in the script. The production scouted around Trieste and along the coast of Croatia to create it. “We could find the broad, tree-lined boulevards we wanted, but no grand hotels exist there yet, and we needed imposing buildings for the Casino and Hotel Splendide exteriors,” says Lamont. “Karlovy Vary was the first place we looked in the Czech Republic, and that’s where we ended up shooting the Hotel Splendide exterior and lobby, and the Casino Royale exterior and public gambling room, with the Salon Privé and hotel bedrooms being built at Barrandov Studios.”

The production transformed an abandoned turn-of-the-century spa into the Casino Royale. “Lazne 1 had all its spa fittings ripped out years ago and has been used by films before, but it was in a bad state. We worked with the local conservation people to restore the staircase and statues in the building. We told them what we wanted and paid for the work to be done, so we left the building in a much better state than it had been for years.” The Grand Hotel Pupp, a local landmark, became the Hotel Splendide with changes of signs and the addition of a canopy and some luscious plants.

Filming in Venice presents its own problems, not the least of which is the fact that the city’s fabled canals dictate that everything must be moved by boat or by foot.

Fortunately, only one set had to be built in the ancient Italian city. “In St. Mark’s Square (Piazza San Marco), we were allowed to use an empty building as the bank where Bond looks for Vesper. Of course, it is one of the busiest tourist destinations in the world, and as soon as we had completed the work and opened the door, we were inundated with tourists trying to change money. This also happened to us at Prague airport, where we were shooting interiors for Miami airport. We set up an exchange booth and had lots of potential customers, some of whom couldn’t understand why we had no currency for them.”

A challenge of a different kind was to design the prototype jet that Le Chiffre plans to have blown up so he can make a fortune on the stock exchange. Lamont and his team visited airplane manufacturers but says the production wasn’t able to base it on an actual plane. “They keep their new models under wraps and probably wouldn’t want to be associated with a storyline such as this,” he says, “so we had to come up with an original design.”

An old 747 was located at Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey, where the production filmed the Miami airport tarmac chase scenes with Bond and Carlos. “The plane had no engines, but it was in fairly good condition, and we could use the body of the 747 to save us the huge expense of building something of that bulk. I looked at many references of airplane construction and decided our Skyfleet should look like the B-52s, with pairs of tandem engines, and an altered cockpit profile. I don’t know if my design would fly, but the B-52s managed!”

Asked to choose a favorite from the many sets and locations, Lamont cites Bond and Vesper’s double suite at the Hotel Splendide, built in Barrandov Studios. “The challenge there was to match the rooms to the reality of the Grand Hotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, which is a very classic hotel of its type, and to include two bathrooms for the scenes where Bond cleans himself up after the fight, and comforts Vesper in the shower.”