Skyfall: Representation of the Bond Franchise
08 March 2020
Tina Kramer-Merriken
The James Bond film series is the most extended, continually running film series. The British spy films are based on the fictional character of MI6 agent James Bond, “007”, who originally appeared in a series of novels by Ian Fleming. The design allegiances connecting the Ian Fleming novels to the various Bond Series directors and screenwriters have helped make the franchise a prominent transmedia presence. Translating the storylines from book form to a movie allows for visual effects to enhance the symbolism of the storyline. James Bond films take place in a realistic world with lots of action, stunts, unique gadgets, and intrigue; the 23rd film, Skyfall, is a good example. Skyfall starts with the mystery introduction and then takes us through an action-filled change of events to the climactic final scene taking place at Bond’s childhood home.
Daniel Kleinman, who has designed every title sequence for the James Bond series of films since GoldenEye, in an interview with Movieline, said, “At the beginning of the film there is always an amazing action sequence, in Skyfall the introduction ends with Bond being shot” (Radatz), which takes place mostly underwater in an unearthly and dark sequence. The lighting after he is submerged in the water was from above and dissolved to dark, “which signifies that all is not what it should be” (Barnwell, 131). When the light returns a life-size female hand, which becomes massive grabs Bond’s foot; he then goes into a black hole, and the screen goes dark, when the lighting returns, he is in a surreal dimension below the surface. This dimension shows Bond as target practice cutouts floating around in the water with blood seeping from the bullet hole in his chest. The camera then travels through the bullet hole, and a female figure appears floating angelically through the water. Guns and knives begin to drop from the top of the screen and land in the sand; then, the audience travels through a graveyard into a red haze. The camera zooms through his iris, which symbolizes everything you just saw was what was going on internally through his mind. Kleinman said his intention was to set up an atmosphere that gives you little clues, little hints, but is not too specific (Radatz).
After the introduction, everyone presumes Bond is dead, but he is just retired. He comes back to England to visit his boss/mother figure, M, who prematurely clears Bond for active duty when he wasn’t physically or mentally fit. M wants him to find the person who was hacking into MI6’s computers. Bond tracks the man in China but kills him before he can find out his employer. A casino chip in the thief’s pocket leads him to Raoul Silva, on a deserted island, holding the hard drive with the names of the undercover agents. Silva reveals that he is a former MI6 agent, betrayed by M, and was using Bond to find M to kill her. He and M must make a final stand against Silva, which takes place at James Bond’s Ancestral Skyfall Lodge designed by Art Director Dean Clegg in six months. The home was built at Hankley Common, Surrey England, to resemble weathered stone buildings of the Glen Coe, Scottish Highlands (Scene Therapy). It was a good representation of what these homes would have looked like during the period of his childhood. Bond had not visited Skyfall since his parents’ death, and the only resident is the gamekeeper Kincade. The lodge symbolizes family for Bond and M is all he has since his parents died years ago, which makes it appropriate that he and M, his mother figure, would go here to hide from the villain. Props such as the Lodge interior and exterior can be symbolic devices that reference themes that exist in the narrative and enhance notions of character and concept. (Barnwell 181).
The exterior of the lodge looked like an ordinary lodge sitting in the middle of acres of land, with a long driveway with stone columns at the beginning of it that says, Skyfall, the name of the estate (figure 1). A blueprint of the lodge was designed and laid out using Vectorworks, a 2D drafting, 3D modeling software. Dean Clegg said Vectorworks allowed him to quickly sketch a blast layout schematic for the various weapons were going to destroy the lodge, share the composite (figure 2) with production, and easily make alterations where necessary (Vectorworks). While this is good for tight timelines, it can start to become overdesigned, meaning there are too many unnecessary details that may untimely take up the film’s time or budget.
The interior scene was shot on a soundstage at Pinewood Studios and highlights all of the classic features of an ancestral British country lodge (Scene Therapy). Since the home has not been lived in for many years, it is very dusty with antique furniture, beautiful wood paneling, hardwood floors, oil paintings, grandfather clocks, stone fireplaces, stag-themed choochkies, rolled up carpeting, and boxes (figure 3&4). The interior lighting in the first part of the lodge scene uses natural sunlight that shines through windows during the day hours. However, once nighttime starts to come, the house gets dark, which symbolizes all hell is about to break loose.
The use of interior and exterior scenery in Skyfall aligns with the James Bond Franchise. The introduction is a perfect example of how all Bond films start, with a fantastic action sequence. Skyfall gives us information about the main character’s personal story, which is something we had never seen previously in a James Bond movie. As time passes, the franchise tweaks things to appeal to the audience but still keeps its principles. The 25th film, entitled No Time to Die, comes out in theaters November 2020. The trailer for it seems to follow the same action-packed thriller that the James Bond Franchise always promises.
Work Cited
Barnwell, Jane. Production Design for Screen: Visual Storytelling in Film and Television. Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2017.
Radatz, Ben, and Ian Albinson Lola Landekic. “James Bond: 50 Years of Main Title Design.” Art of the Title, www.artofthetitle.com/feature/james-bond-50-years-of-main-title-design/.
Scene Therapy. “Fictional Homes: James Bond's Ancestral Home, Skyfall.” Scene Therapy, 3 Sept. 2017, scenetherapy.com/fictional-homes-james-bonds-ancestral-home-skyfall/.
Vectorworks. “Using Vectorworks for Bond Sets.” Vectorworks, Inc., www.vectorworks.net/en-US/customer-showcase/vectorworks-software-for-bond-sets.
