Museum #16 London Film Museum
On Friday morning, we shuffled down to the London Film Museum. As we'd be avoiding the weekend footfall, we assumed we'd have a relatively peaceful experience and would be around to peruse the film exhibitions at a leisurely pace.
How wrong we were.
It turned out that Friday was the public opening of 'Bond in Motion' – the largest exhibition of 007 vehicles in the world. There was a mammoth queue snaking from the front of the building, full of diehard petrolheads. As we'd come this far, we decided we'd check it out and joined the queue.
Our first stop inside was the mezzanine.
We saw clapperboards,
scripts,
and storyboards.
Sir Ken Adams has been the lead designer for a number of vehicle concepts used by Bond.
Here's a couple of his creations:
In the main exhibition space, a huge number of vehicles are on display.
First up was the Rolls Royce phantom from Goldfinger.
It's a beautiful car:
There was another beautiful roller on display, from A View to a Kill:
There were a number of Bond props on display around the exhibition, which were interesting to see:
The exhibition did a really good job of showing clips of the cars in movies alongside each model – to jog your memory for each vehicle:
There was a pretty amazing SFX remote control unit on display, from the production of Die Another Day. What a great job – pressing those buttons and watching sparks fly.
It wasn't just cars – Little Nellie from You Only Live Twice was on display.
As were some of the motorbikes used in the last few films:
I was amazed to learn that the producers actually use 1/3 models to film a number of shots within a movie. Here's a couple of them:
Note the Halle Berry/Pierce Brosnan action man figures in this helicopter:
The fantastic Crocodile Submarine from Octopussy was on display.
The submarine Lotus Espirit was also on show, alongside the Neptune 2-man submarine, and a natty surfboard from Die Another Day – complete with C4 compartment.
There were a couple of beaten up Aston Martin Vantages, from the latest Daniel Craig films – including the car that broke the record for the number of stunt flips:
But without doubt, this was the main event – a beautiful Aston Martin DB5:
Overall, not quite what I was expecting for the London Film Museum (entirely Bond focused, almost entirely vehicle focused) but an interesting-ish morning all the same. That said, I'm light on facts…
#1. Sir Ken Adam has worked on 7 Bond films – creating vehicles including the gadget laden Aston Martin DB5.
#2. The Timothy Dalton Bond passport and the Pierce Brosnan Bond passport have different dates of birth.
#3. Vesper's role at the Treasury is 'International Liason Officer'.
#4. The submarine from Diamonds Are Forever was called 'The Bath-O-Sub'.
#5. 3D Printing was used in the production of Skyfall (a Bond first) to create a number of DB5 replicas for use in the attack on Bond's estate.
1. Cartoon Museum
2. Churchill War Rooms
3. Cinema Museum
4. Dennis Sever's House
5. Dr Johnson's house
6. Design Museum
7. Down House
8. The Geffrye Museum
9. London Film Museum
10. London Transport Museum
11. Mansion House
12. Brunel Museum
13. Museum of the Order of St John
14. Musical Museum
15. Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret
16. Pollock's Toy Museum
17. Rose Theatre exhibition
18. Fashion and Textile Museum
19. Royal College of Music Archives and Museum of Instruments
20. Sherlock Holmes Museum
21. Twinings Museum
22. V&A Museum of Childhood
23. Bank of England museum
24. The Stephens Museum