Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1043753
D This concert was famously broadcast around the world to more than a billion people and the production wanted every detail and nuance from the setting to the exact choreography of the performance to be accurate. Unfortunately, the concert venue had been torn down and replaced nearly twenty years earlier, so we would have to improvise. After consulting with the producers and visual effects supervisor Paul Norris, we determined that we would build as much of the venue as possible and use visual effects to extend the rest as needed. The first challenge in this process was going to be finding a place to build Wembley Stadium. This would not be a small undertaking. All of Greater London was searched for an open field or parking lot large enough to accommodate the set before finally settling on Bovingdon Airfield, a retired RAF air base to the northwest. Of course, even this was not as easy as it might have been. The land had been divided over the years and now had multiple owners. The shoot would end up straddling two farms, a racetrack and a weekend market. And just to add one more layer of complication, it was also soon discovered that there was a Heathrow airport radar station operating at one end of the site which would limit the location and height of the build. But with all that out of the way, construction could begin. We Will Rock You From the earliest conversations about this sequence, I wanted to be able to offer the director the opportunity to see the vibrant life backstage at Live Aid, to shoot an intimate scene in a dressing room and to walk through the concourse of Wembley Stadium until finally emerging onto a stage in front of over one hundred thousand people…all in one continuous shot. Looking over the reference materials, I made a quick sketch of the set and pinned it to the wall. Surprisingly, after many weeks of design and iteration, the spirit of that sketch was very much intact. David Hindle and I sat with construction manager Jo Hawthorne and came up with a plan. Assistant Art Director Oliver Williams began drafting a detailed set of drawings and we were D. EXTRAS HUDDLE TOGETHER FOR WARMTH AS "QUEEN" PERFORMS ON THE WEMBLEY SET BUILT AT BOVINGDON AIRFIELD. E. CLIMACTIC SCENE OF THE BAND PERFORMING ITS ICONIC LIVE AID SET, WITH DIGITAL CROWD REPLICATION AND SET EXTENSION BY DOUBLE NEGATIVE. E