Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
For over 20 years Greg Williams was the official photographer to James Bond. Here he looks back at his time shooting the beginning of Daniel Craig’s tenure as 007 on the twentieth anniversary of Casino Royale.
The first Bond set I ever went on was The World Is Not Enough, when I visited the Caspian Sea caviar factory set at Pinewood, which was Robbie Coltrane’s character’s lair. I went on that because I made a book called Greg Williams on Set which featured pictures from different British movie sets. Three years later I got a phone call from Eon – they wanted to do a book on Die Another Day. And that was the beginning of my working relationship with James Bond.
I must have spent 60-odd days on the set of Die Another Day, and, in that time, really became a part of the Eon/Bond family. A couple of years later I was building a relationship with Daniel Craig on the set of Layer Cake. When I started work on Casino Royale, the screentests for Bond were down to the last three, and Daniel was one of them. I remember Daniel saying, ‘Well, look, if I get the job, it’d be brilliant to have you there’.
I was commissioned to make a book on the making of the film and was given this incredible privilege of being handed a script and a schedule, and told, ‘You work out what you think you’ll need’. It’s a very different role to that of the unit photographer whose primary role is to recreate the shots filmed in stills. I didn’t have to look for that picture. My MO was to find the other stuff that is presented here.
In preproduction Daniel was getting stronger and stronger, and taking on the physique of the Bond that he wanted – a character that really looked like he was capable of killing. At the same time he was learning all the skills. He was training in weapons, fighting and driving.
On about day six of filming I was on set of the famous bathroom scene which opens the film where Bond makes his first kill. This was the first time they’ve ever used the classic gun barrel shot as part of the narrative of the film and once they filmed it, they dragged the camera off to the right, and I went into the position, and we shot it again for me and for the unit photographer. The resulting shot was very much ‘eyes and gun straight down the barrel’. And that, along with the movement of his jacket, makes it a really dynamic picture and it made the cover of my book Bond On Set – Filming Casino Royale.
Later in the shoot we went to the Bahamas where I shot Daniel in the classic Aston Martin which Bond wins in a card game. I love Daniel framed the way he is in the car door. It really reminds me of a young Steve McQueen or a young James Dean, this picture somehow already feels vintage.
I love the shot of Daniel in his stunt harness, it just drums home the physique that he’s carrying under there. It’s just such a physical manifestation of James Bond. It’s one of my favourite pictures from the whole set.
Producer Michael Wilson pulled me aside when I was trying to photograph Daniel with an emphasis on strength, and he said ‘Greg, listen, Bond doesn’t stand there showing everyone how strong he is. Think of Bond as a leopard’. He said that when you see a leopard, it lies on the tree and is totally relaxed. It’s not showing you how strong it is, but you know that in a split second it could jump up and be ready for attack. I found that really useful, and it informed the way I shot Daniel’s Bond from that day forward.
The actors had all done a lot of training to learn how to play Texas Hold’em poker convincingly. I like that the chair’s empty next to Bond, that you can see the dealer’s chip there and ‘Casino Royale’ on the table.
While we were there I shot this portrait of Daniel at Barrandov Studios. I just asked him for a couple of minutes during a break in filming, and went up to the sparks [on-set electricians], and asked them to borrow one little 650-watt Tungsten Fresnel light. There’s a trick I learned from reading a book about how they used to light portraits in the ‘30s and ‘40s. They used the very edge of the Fresnel, which was called feathered light. So this light is mainly pointing at me, and it’s just the feathered edge that I’ve shaped Daniel with. I had two V-flats, which are two 4-by-8ft polyboard flats that are taped together. One’s behind him, and the other is to the left, which is creating that fill light around his ear and cheek. It’s shot on a very, very low aperture. It’s shot on f1.2, which creates a dreamy feel timeless feel. It’s my favourite portrait I’ve ever taken of Daniel. And it was made in seconds. No crew.
Towards the end of production we were in Lake Como (see top). There was a real decision that Daniel made on this gun, that it wasn’t going to be a Walther PPK in this moment. He chose an assault weapon. It reminds you that Bond has only recently become a double-O, and really he’s a naval officer. I remember there were a number of options. But Daniel said, ‘I think it’s this’. And this is the moment in the film where he shoots Mr White in the leg, stands over him, and delivers the famous ‘Bond, James Bond’ line.
I love this picture because, it’s a frame within a frame. And the boom points your eye directly to Daniel. The camera on the floor is looking directly up, and even the lines of the rope all guide you to Daniel. These are not calculations I’m aware of making at the time. But I do have an interesting trick; when I’m in a situation I often go and stand where other people are standing to watch. People tend to stand naturally where they get the best view of something. So without thinking, they’re all seeing a photo they’re not taking.
Also on Lake Como was the ‘convalescence home’ where Bond recovers after being tortured by Le Chiffre. I took this picture of Eva Green after a day’s filming. We were travelling back to her hotel on one of the old Riva boats and I asked if I could take some portraits along the way. I shot a series, but this one stood out. There’s a real authenticity in her smile, it feels natural and completely in the moment.
This was also the film that I got to shoot my first Bond movie poster. I had this idea of doing something that was a real hark back to a ‘60s Bond. We wanted the smokiness of a casino so we rented a ballroom in a hotel in Prague where they had chandeliers and filled this room with haze. We set up the table and all the chips, and Daniel had a Walther PPK and a deck of cards. We used mirrors that would just dink a little bit of reflective light across his eyes, and make a dreamlike, ethereal poster. Sony, at the time, was not interested in that. It wasn’t a concept that they wanted us to invest our time on. So when they went for lunch during the shoot, Daniel and I had a go at it, and showed it to [producer] Barbara Broccoli, who liked it. And hey presto, a few months later, it turned out to be my first-ever Bond poster, and the first teaser for Casino Royale. There’s a picture of me looking horrifically young, holding it up with beaming pride in the offices of Eon Productions. It was definitely a seminal moment for me and my career. If I talk about 10 things I’ve done in my career, shooting Bond posters is definitely one of them.
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And the beautiful thing about it is that it is an actual photograph. Nowadays so many posters are a ‘photoshop fail’ – the hand is different to the arm; it’s different to the shoulder; it’s different to the head. I was very proud that it was an actual photograph. It was amazing to go to the premiere and see that the whole of Leicester Square was just my posters. It was a ‘pinch me’ moment, which I was then lucky enough to have several times over with other Bond films.
What I learned on Casino Royale, that I try to take forward in life, is the innocence of not knowing everything, and not overthinking things. I used to get very nervous before shoots, and then I started to learn that I do know what I’m doing, and if you put me with an amazing actor or actress, and you have then dressed in amazing clothes, and you put them in beautiful light, you’re going to get something good. It’s going to happen.
I learned who Daniel’s Bond was quite quickly and I’m proud to have been a part of building that visual identity in stills. I was often trying to shoot motion, action, trying to capture this feeling that something is always happening. Bond always has some form of motivation, and I wanted to see that in the pictures and in the posters. I’m so grateful to Daniel, Barbara and Michael Wilson for having me on that ride. As a photographer, it was such an insane gift.
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER
All On Set Photographs © Greg Williams
Casino Royale is available on Amazon
