A Day at the Chase!
By Andrew Hobson
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LONDON - A chance meeting with Vic Armstrong on the Waterloo Bridge at 8.15 in the morning on Tuesday 13th April resulted in a unique insight into the filming on the River Thames, and a plethora of great photo opportunities. Vic invited two friends and myself down onto Festival Pier, which is located on the South Bank, and is the temporary home for the crew during their two-week shoot on that stretch of the Thames. The Pier is privately owned, and serves as the nerve centre for all the 2nd Unit's filming operations. The Thames is featured in the pre-title sequence after a beautiful female assassin blows up the MI6 building and makes off in the boat, right. Bond chases her in a concept hydrojet craft, fondly known as "The Q Boat", lower right.
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Sarah Donohue, the Cigar Girl's Boat Driving Double, aboard the sleek SunSeeker Hawk 34.



Vic Armstrong, just after we encountered him on Waterloo Bridge. Vic is an extremely thoughtful and pleasant man, and everyone I spoke to had kind words to say about him.
 We took the opportunity to chat to Vic on our way down to the pier, and I asked him to tell us about the Q Boat. Vic told us that the boat was designed and built in Canada, and in all, 7 have been built, some real, some not. The boats use a special 350hp V12 jet engine, which sucks water in at the front and pumps it out of the back at high pressure. This makes the boat very noisy, but also means it has no propellers, which is crucial for the scene where the boat skids across the road and through a bar, explained Vic. It is very true that the boat is able to operate in only 3 inches of water.

When we arrived at the Pier, Vic waved us past three sets of security guards, and introduced us to Patricia O’Reilly, unit Publicist and Simon Crane, stunt co-ordinator. We were immediately offered a packet of crisps, an apple and a cigarette, but said we were fine, thankyouverymuch. Vic, who wore purple and blue waterproofs and a life jacket all day, stayed with us for another ten minutes, during which time my friend Jason couldn’t avoid telling Vic how good he thought the Pre-title sequence of Tomorrow Never Dies was. Vic agreed, and went on to tell us that he was very proud of TND, that he thought it was a great achievement. He went on to say that he had hoped to direct this Bond film, especially since he directed 80% of Tomorrow Never Dies. It looks as if Vic will finally be given the chance in two year's time with the 20th Bond film. When asked about the Chamonix shoot last month, Vic replied that he had had a lot of fun there, but the schedule was gruelling and the weather was not kind. He told us how the “ParaSkis” of the original script had been modified to something more frightening, and he said the machines were deliberately made to look as menacing as possible.
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Lowering the various Q Boats into the water ready for filming.
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A shot from the bank of the Thames showing the set up of the unit; The Golden Salamander, the Harbour Patrol Boat, and the numerous Q Boats.
They started preparing the boats for the first shots of the day at about 10am, although refuelling of the Q boats began much earlier at about 9 am and was completed within half an hour. SunSeeker B made its dazzling appearance about 15 minutes later, and docked alongside the Pier, during which a small crowd formed on the bank to watch.
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Bond Boat Driving Double Wade Eastwood,
on his way down to the Pier.
 We saw a Bond-like figure descend the tunnel onto the Pier platform. Dressed in a smart black tuxedo and tie, from a distance he looked like Pierce Brosnan. It turned out that the man's name was Wade Eastwood, a keen motor boat pilot and a Bond lookalike, who would be doubling for Brosnan in the chase scene.
We spoke to Wade before he boarded the Q boat, about his job on the film. He told us that today they were planning to do a “near miss” involving Bond's and The Cigar Girl's boats nearly hitting each other whilst motoring past each other. Vic Armstrong popped over and added that they might even graze along the sides of each other, at 40 mph. Wade is a very pleasant chap and seemed in his element whilst piloting Bond's Q Boat. During the day, he really put the boat through it’s paces, and seemed to have a lot of fun out on the river racing up and down while the camera crew were still getting ready.
We then went over to meet Sarah Donohue. It was the second time I have met Sarah, the other time being at the Millennium Dome. She looked completely different this time, because of the black wig she was wearing, and the tanning lotion she had put on, to make her skin colour closer to that of Maria Grazia Cucinotta, who she was doubling for. Sarah complained about the bitter cold (the temperature was about 5 degrees), and said that after spending an hour driving up and down the Thames, wearing only a leather suit, she could hardly stand up, let alone drive the boat. “It’s so cold, I’m freezing my tits off out there,” she exclaimed in a fit of emotion.
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Sarah and myself aboard the SunSeeker.
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Sarah Donohue, who at this point was "absolutely freezing". This was right after she had been out on the Thames, and she was just about to set off again for Tower Bridge to do another couple of hours of filming. Her signature, below, was handed to me just as the Sunseeker was pulling away from the Pier. It nearly ended up in the river!
Whilst I was talking to Sarah, technicians and SFX people were busy at work in the background assembling the big machine gun and mortars that would grace the deadly SunSeeker for the rest of the day. My friend got talking to the armourer, Andy Williams, who is the 2nd Unit's equivalent of Q, (as Vic Armstrong put it) who explained that the Cigar Girl's gun, which is mounted on the back of the boat (right) is one of a kind, unique. No other example of it exists anywhere else in the world. The gun, which is nearly 2 meters tall, was fitted with live rounds, and you could see the gold bullets loaded into it when you got up close. Andy explained that other weapons used on the day include a G36, H & K 21, S & W 436 pistol and a special weapon which Bond uses, but doesn't have it's own name yet.
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Sarah Donohue is pictured here aboard
the SunSeeker Hawk 34, as the armourer
makeslast minute adjustments to the large
guns and mortars mounted on the rear of
the boat.
The two boats, a safety boat with divers and medics aboard, and a camera boat set off to film some scenes around the Tower Bridge at about 10.30am, and everyone gathered at the edge of the pontoon to watch them go (right). The whole set suddenly became very quiet after they left.
The picture above shows the camera boat, the Kos Intercepter, which was manned by Vic Armstrong and Simon Crane and several camera crew.
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Dominic, assistant art director on The World Is Not Enough.
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We got onto the subject of films he has recently worked on, and besides Titanic and last year's doomed Avengers movie, he said that he had played a large part in creating the models for the new "Thunderbirds 2000" movie, which is a big-budget remake of the cult 60’s tv show. He said that he had built some of the ships featured in the movie, which will (apparently) look very realistic when put on film. His work on that film was over a year ago, and since then, funding for the new Thunderbirds movie has dried up, and production on the film was halted last summer, so it is difficult to say whether we will ever get the chance to see the film.

Dominic, an assistant art director, who I had been talking to while all this was going on, told me that there was very little to do while most of the unit were filming downstream. He said that the fun would start towards the end of this week and all next week when daring stunts were planned. Dominic, who I had met the week previously at the Millennium Dome, has a very important job with the production, yet was very modest about his role in the film.
He revealed that most of his work was related to miniature effects and creating scale models for scenes where using the real thing would be too expensive or simply impractical. He went on to give me two examples of his work. The balloon that the Cigar Girl uses to escape in at the beginning of the film is a very difficult sequence to do, and they were unsure whether or not to use a model for its explosion. In the event, they opted to make a model of the balloon, because of logistics of detonating a full-size balloon were nightmarish. Dominic also told me that for the scene where Maria Grazia Cucinotta puts a “hole in the wall” of the MI6 building right at the start of the film, will be done entirely with miniatures, which he had a part in building back at the [Pinewood] Studios. I asked him what the most difficult part of his job was, and he agreed that working with water in miniature was very difficult, and fire too, as both are difficult to make look realistic on a small scale.
Patricia O'Reilly, unit publicist, came over to join in the conversation, and told us stories about how she has dealt with foreign tv companies in the past who wanted to do features on the Bond films, yet could hardly speak a word of English. She told me that her job was essentially being a contact within Eon productions, and she liaised with newspapers, magazines and TV shows wanting to cover the filming. That morning she was meeting a representative from the daily Mirror, who wanted to print an article about the unit's activity on the Thames.
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Patricia invited my friends and I into the unit's equivalent of the “mess tent”, a tourist boat called the “Golden Salamander”, which is moored right next to the Pier. There, we were given tea, coffee and biscuits, and it was there that we met Jon, a versatile location assistant who had already performed several functions on the film.

Wade Eastwood in the Q Boat, having a whale of a time.
Jon acted as assistant to the locations manager whilst filming of the launch sequence was taking place in Vauxhall, right next to the MI6 building. Today, he was simply acting as part of the security team, which gave him plenty of opportunities for him to talk to us about the film in general, and to give away some fascinating behind-the-scenes knowledge. He said that so far, the most exciting day's work on the film had been last Thursday (8th April), when the unit were experimenting with underwater explosive charges at Pontoon Docks, just downstream from Tower Bridge. Apparently the Environmental Commission had been very stubborn about them setting off several kilograms of explosive right in the middle of the Thames, and were concerned about the number of fish that would be stunned, during the explosion (stunned fish float to the surface and usually die). So, they experimented with an expensive apparatus called an FSD (Fish-Seeking Device) which was basically a big waterproof speaker which emitted a very high frequency sound, which scared all the fish away from the area where they would be setting off the explosive charges. In the end, the FSD proved highly effective and the number of fish injured as a result of the explosive testing was only slight.
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Wade Eastwood again, demonstrating the
power and speed of the Q Boat.
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The barge, known as "Semois" which functions as a workshop and also houses the Q boats while they are not in use. A big crane was mounted on top of the barge, which lifted the boats into the water.

Jon explained that a humorous aspect of that day was the constant radio contact they had to maintain with London City Airport, or STOL Port (Short take off and landing). Because of the close proximity of the explosions to aircraft taking off and coming in to land, permission had to be granted by the Air Traffic Controller for the explosives to be detonated. Jon said it was a case of an “all clear” from the radio man, the message was passed on to the explosives team, who would then detonate the charge, which would send an 80 ft tower of water and spray into the air.
We left the Pier at about 1pm to go and get some lunch. We returned about an hour later to find all the crew had arrived back, and that they were planning on filming a sequence right next to the Pier itself. I got the opportunity to speak to Sarah Donohue again, who was even colder than she was during the morning.
The two images to the right show the crew filming around the docklands area, taken by a local resident with a digital camera.
In the right hand side shot, the Cigar Girl's rear-mounted machine gun can be seen clearly.
Simon Crane, the world-renowned stunt co-ordinator, came over to talk to us. Simon, who was wearing a stylish black jacket, expensive sunglasses and inflatable buoyancy device, really looked the part. A big, but very softly spoken man, Simon explained to us the sequence that they were planning on filming in the afternoon. Sarah Donohue, as the Cigar Girl, would make some daring manoeuvres to try and escape her pursuer, James Bond (Wade Eastwood). In the event, they did 5 takes of the sequence, in which Sarah threw the boat wildly around in the River (almost capsizing it) while Bond drew closer alongside (“It’s pure Bond” added Simon, who went on to say that takes 1, 3 and 5 were the best)...
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.Simon Crane and myself on Festival Pier.

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Vic Armstrong and Jason Mortlock, whom I spent the day with on set.

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Simon Crane, stunt co-ordinator on The World Is Not Enough.
Recent films he has worked on include Titanic
and Saving Private Ryan.
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Simon Crane and friend Mark Witherspoon,
with whom I also spent the day on set.
Simon described what the Unit is planning to do on Friday. Apparently, a very dramatic stunt is planned in Milwall Docks whereby Bond's boat does a barrel roll and spins over the top of the Cigar-Girl’s boat, destroying the radar and radio aerials mounted on the top of the SunSeeker. He explained they were using special “jets” to perform the stunt, although he failed to elaborate on that. He said “it’s going to be one of the most exciting stunts in the film, and it’s gonna take days to prepare”. Simon, who was still very tanned from his two-month stay in Chamonix, where they filmed the ski chase, hinted that Pierce Brosnan would be on set next Monday morning to film some close ups. We talked to Simon for another five minutes, until he had to climb back aboard the camera boat to film some more action.

Sarah, right, returns to the Pier in between takes. Good view of the SunSeeker gun.
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We had another quick chat to Vic just before he left. He introduced us to his daughter, who was about our  age, and we had our photos taken with him, and I angled the camera, upon his advice, so that we would get the Q Boats in the background. Ingenious! 

..Above: Vic Armstrong and Simon Crane aboard one of the boats. 

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Simon Crane gives us a smile as he and the rest of the crew (including Vic, centre right) head out into the middle of the river. This was at about 2.30pm, and the weather was by now very windy. A hailstone shower has caused the crew to cease filming, and showers were intermittent. 

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This strange black object is actually a specially produced Steadycam, which, when mounted on the back of a boat, counteracts the natural up and down movement of the boat to produce a steady picture.

A classic shot showing Bond overtaking the Cigar Girl, with Cleopatra's Needle in the background.
The camera boat is just out of shot to the right. Sarah Donohue proceeded to throw the boat around in the water to create maximum dramatic effect. At one point, the violent swerves she was making with the SunSeeker caused us to comment that she might capsize the boat. Jon, who was standing nearby, replied "No, she's too good for that."
We all went back on board the Golden Salamander, where some hot food was laid on for the crew. We talked to a man who worked as an explosives advisor with a company called Bapty’s, who seemed very bored, because on this particular day, he had nothing to do, but he was required to be on set all the same.
Just then, we noticed that there was excitement brewing just up the steps from the dining room, yet all we could see were a pair of shapely legs and a tight leather outfit. We all realized at once: Maria Grazia Cucinotta! She was due on set at about 3pm to film some close ups. I took the opportunity to have my photo taken with her. She is an absolutely stunning girl, and she was very friendly indeed, and although her English wasn't perfect, she spoke with a lovely accent.
I even got her signature (below), and she even had to ask how to spell Andrew!
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Conclusion
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By 4pm, Maria left the Pier on a launch to film some close ups, and the whole place settled down again. We thanked Patricia, and Terry Bamber, the fearsome Production Manager who isn't actually all that bad (watch out for him- he has a really short temper, you don't want to be around when he gets mad, several people advised me from experience). Terry is actually a bit of a joker, and is a big John Barry fan, which goes a long way. We finally left the set to go home at about 4.15pm, and boy, had I had a good day!

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At the end of the day, the Q Boats were crane-lifted
out of the water.
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