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Someone else above said it was confirmed to be another actor, which was news to me.
I literally posted the screenshots in this thread. You're not going to convince me there isn't a younger actor in those screenshots!
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Not the same person. I feel like I'm losing my mind. Are we all actually looking at the reference?
I daresay the kid had a bit of digital tweaking to his eyes and possibly even ears to better match Craig's.
EDIT: the_double_0_look
It’s funny because it very well may be a different person, but certainly not a nine year old or whatever, hiding in the priest’s hole!
It's a Scottish 9-year-old, so about 20 in normal years.
https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/xfzxb9/young_old_bond_in_skyfall_titles/
I think they released the PTS before the film or something. I remember having a copy very early and doing my own edits.
Also, this actor has played an MI6 assistant in both Skyfall and Spectre. He has the eyes and freckles, but I don't think he's our young Bond; however, with a bit of bulking I don't think he'd be bad for Bond himself.
Ian Bonar
Edit: I've gone and emailed Kleinman lol so I'll keep everybody posted if I get a response.
I always thought the top image was a screenshot of Daniel's eyes from Casino, when he returns to the table after the shower scene. To be precise
"I hope our little game isn't causing you to perspire"
"A litte...but I won't consider myself to be in trouble till I start weeping blood"
At that moment Bond makes eye contact with Le Chiffre, his head is down but his eyes look up to meet his gaze, exactly the same expression as the top image. I could be wrong
I don't think it's as "obvious" as you think it is, given the response in this thread from diehard Bond fans. I personally never knew, but then again I don't bother much with SF viewings.
That's pretty much what I always thought. Younger CR era Craig.
But compared side by side it does look like someone else.
Just ease back..............RELAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAX.
Just looks like Craig to me. Probably from an earlier film, possibly airbrushed and widened, but still very much Craig.
I think you're broadly right about the symbolism behind it and how it feeds into the later plot (I didn't necessarily get the sense it was meant to literally be a 9 year old Bond, but just a visualisation of the priest hole idea.. SF really has great titles indeed), but why would they get another actor for such a moment? The process is so digital effects heavy and it's a relatively simple thing to do. There'd be no point in getting a younger actor in. Anyway, Kleinman has said that Craig was featured in the titles and did stuff specifically for it. No one else to my knowledge was ever mentioned. It'd be a strange thing to keep secret.
He’s got different facial features, the shape of his eyes, eyebrows nose etc. are all different. The ear is a similar general shape but the structure inside is different, and that won’t change with age. It’s a different person.
They would get a kid in because they needed a kid, and they’re not going to use a shot of Craig from only a couple of years ago because no shot of him would have been photographed correctly: this eyeball had to be twenty feet high on the screen and Kleinman wants it lit/shot perfectly, he’s not Binder, using old scraps from previous films and titles and bodging them together (TSWLM Rog in AVTAK titles etc). And at no point (other than the end of the titles) in CR does he look into the camera. Its not a ‘deaged’ shot of Craig as this is three years before Ant Man. It’s a child/teen actor or model, it just is.
Kleinman's used footage from previous films in his titles before, SP being a prominent example. He just uses them for more symbolic purposes than Binder, who did it more for practical reasons. Nonetheless he still uses them when needed, and again looking at the inclusion of Vesper, Silva, Le Chiffre etc from the SP titles they can be blended in effectively.
At the end of the day it's a bit difficult to tell as none of us know what the process was when the titles were created in general, let along for this one moment! That said, it's really not a case of any previous still needing to be 'correct' to fit into this moment because Kleinman and his VFX team would have crafted the digital images (in this case the crack) around what they have. If it is a previous still it wouldn't even have been from a couple of years prior but more likely 6+ years prior. Remember, they'd also have access to all the footage from CR and QOS. Not just the final product, but all the deleted scenes, unused promo material etc. It doesn't have to be from the finished film. Airbrushing and smoothing out facial features has existed for a long time in digital VFX, and if present here is a relatively simple example. Heck, even before Ant-Man you had films like X-Men: The Last Stand and Benjamin Button which applied VFX for such purposes. Even cutting an old still with new footage to add the little facial movements you see in the titles as they zoom in on the face was possible in 2012.
Also, did no one catch the little quote from Kleimnam cited by @DewiWynBond? It's legitimate and might explain why the facial features in these two images (should they both be Craig) look slightly different.
"There was a bit of a stumble over Daniel Craig’s eyes at the end of the sequence, which were meant to be a reprise of his young eyes from earlier on, witnessing something we know not what, yet. The problem was that although I filmed Daniel himself, many people didn’t recognise the eyes as his! I think he is not often filmed that close and he has very distinctive features that if not seen altogether can cause a bit of confusion. So I had to artificially widen the shot to see a bit more nose, ears, and mouth to make sure everyone knew who it was."
We know Kleinman shot fresh footage for that final shot, but obviously he doesn't mention the footage/still of the 'young eyes' from earlier. That said I've searched and found nothing about a young actor ever mentioned by Kleinman. Why not? Even if it were a VFX technician's son or something that'd be a cool bit of trivia. It wouldn't be a secret. To be honest it seems like the sort of thing he'd specifically mention.
To me, it doesn't even look like a 9 year old quite frankly. I always thought it was just meant to be a younger version of Craig's Bond, not the literal embodiment of him as a child. Maybe I'm just not seeing it, and at the end of the day either it is a child model or it isn't. I suspect it isn't. It just doesn't seem practical or necessary to use one for such a small moment.
It's not though, because it's a different person :) Different facial features = different person. They don't look slightly different, they look completely different.
No, it's been shot with very specific lighting, harsh and from directly above at the front, to evoke hiding in an enclosed space. He hasn't repurposed it, he's shot it and photographed it rather nicely; and directed the boy to give a performance too. All of which he's then repeated with the shot of Craig because he needs them to match. He shoots lots of stuff especially (all of it, essentially), and he hires actors to play the dancing girls etc. And it then zooms to a huge degree on the boy; it's not some old grainy photo.
Well, no, like I said it could just be that the manipulation of the last image makes Craig's nose/face look narrower.
Both images have Craig's rather distinctive ears which, let's be honest, stick out slightly. The cheekbones look similar. The eyes are certainly the same. At a casual glance they look like the same person, just at different ages. If anything it's the last image of Craig which looks ever so slightly 'off' (again, it makes sense as we know it's been manipulated).
The shadowing/lighting really doesn't look like anything that couldn't be done in post/through colour grading from a previous image.
He does shoot a lot of stuff for his titles, which again this is why it's surprising nothing about a child actor is ever mentioned by him in interviews.
Your idea that they'd somehow get incredibly lucky and find extreme close-up unused material of Craig from a few years prior, lit and performing in exactly the way needed and in high enough resolution to zoom in tight, and then spend ages digitally changing him to make him look quite different, really seems more likely than them just hiring a boy who looks a bit similar, photographing him exactly how they need him, and boosting his eye colour a bit?
I could be wrong but I always thought it was a screenshot from that moment, the expression on Daniel's face and the position of his eyes are almost an identical match. Perhaps they used that and digitally altered his features to make him look younger?
I'd be surprised if they kept a close up double of Bond hidden for 10 years, from us die hard fans 😅.
I do see your point though @mtm they do look different, you're definitely onto something mate
Like I said, the last image has been manipulated, and from Kleinman's quote it seems like what he did to allow more of Craig's features to be seen resulted in some narrowing of the face.
It's not about getting lucky, it's about fitting what they have into the digital world they are trying to create. Again, with all the access to the unused promo material, footage etc. it's not unlikely they'd have found a close up of Craig such as this.
Worth noting as well the first image looks noticeably soft. I'm not even sure if the left eye is in focus. A bit odd if it were a fresh bit of footage, and to me suggests it wasn't shot as recently as the last image. From experience, it'd be relatively easy and in keeping with the post-production process to do all that rather than get a young actor in, as both require extensive post-production work. Actually, probably using a previous still would be easier to work with in some ways. Less costly too.
The cost of paying for a child actor (not to mention the handler, the crew/equipment needed to photograph them) outweighs the low cost of finding a previous image. The post production process for these titles are extensive, and usually take a year anyway. Even Craig's footage for the titles was filmed in a day after shooting on location from what I understand. Honestly, I'd be very surprised if anything definitive about a 'child actor' for that shot was dug up.
Manipulated to look like a different person? Why would they do that?
It's very unlikely; it's being shot like a photography portrait.
It's motion blur, the camera is zooming.
And yet they've got Daniel Craig, movie star, in to shoot his close-up. Hiring a kid for an hour or two isn't exactly going to blow the budget. It's a kid.