Spoiler: Skyfall lodge is destroyed in a huge explosion.

Oops! Our mistake. That  picture is from Harry Potter. And here I was about to say at least EON is being original. Essentially imagine the same picture except substitute Skyfall Lodge.
You can follow this link for more spoilers and pictures
Special Thanks to “Kristatos”
Discuss this in our forum


The film's crew and designers spent months building the replica building in the middle of the English countryside to create the perfect mansion worthy of a secret agent.
But in true action film style, nothing ever stays standing or intact for too long.
And last night, James Bond's countryside lodge was destroyed in a huge explosion as more scenes were filmed for the upcoming 007 film.

Bond is burning: 007's Skyfall Lodge is hit by a huge explosion in scenes filmed this weekend on the Surrey set for the upcoming film

Flames soaring hundreds of feet in the air were seen right across Surrey as the purpose-built mansion was set on fire.
It made for an impressive sight as the plywood and plaster stone building was engulfed in flames.
Surprisingly, considering how quickly the flames spread, the scene was actually shot over a couple of nights.

The Sky is Fall-ing: The flames shot hundreds of feet in the air and could be seen for miles around

According to onlookers, the fire is started in the scenes by Javier Bardem who was seen by the lodge surrounded by a camera crew.
His malevolent character - called Silva - and his gang are filmed throwing an incendiary device into the lodge.
Ironically, the Spanish star was banned from smoking on set last week because of the fire risk.

Call the fire brigade! The flames started off small as they began to lick the house...

... and was believed to have started at the main entrance to Bond's family home

Even though the house and the set were razed to the ground last night, Bardem, 43, was asked not to light up in case he accidentally started a fire too early.
A source told the Sun: 'Javier loves his cigarettes and is always smoking on set to pass the time. The Skyfall lodge has been built in a field with some pretty dry grass, though. It wouldn't take much for one of his butts to catch alight.
'They've had word with him and he keeps well away now when on a smoke break.'

Take that, James! Javier Bardem's character and his gang are surrounded by film crew as they shoot the fire scene

Bond's ancestry up in flames: The fire soon began to take hold as the film crew captured every flame

The Oscar winner was first seen on set as the crew shot scenes in London's Whitehall earlier this month, dressed as a Metropolitan police officer.
In a blonde wig, he was almost unrecognisable as he stood there in full uniform about to wreak havoc for Bond and the British government.
At the press conference to promote the film a few months ago, Javier was asked about playing a Bond villian, to which he replied: 'Who told you a villain is a bad person?

Masterpiece: The purpose-built mansion, made from plywood and plaster, was seen in all its glory as filming started on the Surrey set earlier this month

'For me, it's an honour to be at this table for many reasons. It will be fun to do.'
The lodge in Surrey was first seen earlier this month when Daniel Craig, who plays the Secret Service agent, was snapped on the set.
He was seen walking into and around the artificial house in Surrey, which for the shoot doubled up as Scotland.

Alone in thought: Daniel Craig, as Bond, was snapped near and around the house during filming

And local photographer Lucy Browne was allowed near and on the set to document the filming.

She posted a selection of photos of everything from gravestones bearing the names of Bond's ancestors to a fleet of identical Land Rovers and wrote: 'I think what I saw will settle the question of whether this set is Bond’s family home or some sort of monastery.'

James Bond movie set infiltrated by Turkish teens!

After all the trouble with a certain wildlife photographer you’d think EON would be a little more cautious in Turkey. As it turns out a group of Turkish High Schoolers easily bypassed security and got close enough to film part of the fight scene. The teens were apparently caught when one of them tried to get  to close the actors. After a pat down the teen was released, the search fails to find the cell phone the teen said was hidden in his underwear. Humm maybe EON should consider hiring a few American TSA agents. Might have stopped the video of the fight from making it to YouTube.
 Discuss this in our forum
Special thanks to “Jack Wade CIA”

James Bond movie ‘Skyfall’s set had been infiltrated by three Turkish high school students in the southern province of Adana, Turkey. The nimble Turkish teens even managed to record footage of a fight scene from filming Skyfall.

Adana, Turkey / NationalTurk – İbrahim Ali Özden, 17, and two friends wanted to witness shooting for latest James Bond movie ‘Skyfall’ at Adana’s train station but could not gain access due to tight security frome filming crew.
The tree chums avoided then security guards by sneaking through alleys and climbed their way nimbly over a wire fence into the train station. There, they crawled under train cars and reached the repair depot, where they grabbed off-duty workers’ overalls and helmets.

Teens sneak onto James Bond Skyfall set, film train-top fight scene

The teens disguised as repairmen, entered a passenger car and saw actors playing a fighting scene on top of another train car. Özden started recording the scene with his cellular phone but was noticed by security personnel once he got out the car to get a closer look at the actors.
‘The security personnel searched me once I was caught,’ Özden says. ‘But they did’nt do it thouroughly and could not find my cell phone because I hid it in my underwear. They made us take off the repairmen suits and sent us off the site. Anyhow it was an unforgettable adventure for me’

James Bond Skyfall is shot in Adana, Turkey

For the latest James Bond movie ‘Skyfall’, Adana Municipality has granted the filmmakers permission to use large areas to shoot the film in order to raise the popularity and reputation of this lovely city on the shores of Mediterranean.

Wildlife Photographer in trouble for Skyfall Pics

March 17, 2012

The only real news coming off the Skyfall set has come from photographs and video taken by bystanders. When filming moved to Hankley Common, near Elstead, Lucy Browne a naturalist photographer began following the developments in her blog, The Foraging Photographer . She got some astonishing photographs of the Skyfall set being constructed along with a few interesting tidbits of information from the film crew constructing the set.
Some of the photos created quite a stir among the Bond fan sites, as we have been following the various developments in our Forum,  when The Daily Mail recognised her contributions it apparently got the attention of EON who then sent the Military Police to warn her off. It is not clear what if any law she violated, and as far as we are aware she is not a participant to a None Disclosure Agreement.
From the outside looking at this it appears the Bond bosses got upset at the spoilers coming from Lucy’s well written site. It is understandable that they would like to stem the flow of possible spoilers, however it is not realistic on a production this size, as the Call Sheet troubles have shown us.
This all may be a big misunderstanding, it may be the MPs were not acting on orders from the film producers, as unlikely as this may seem. What is clear is private citizen was harassed for causing no real trouble and doing no real harm, if anything the pictures would help to promote the movie. And it is not like there are not hundreds of pictures taken on set already out there.
We think that if the film bosses had a problem with The Foraging Photographer they should have contacted them to either buy the photos (maybe for a making of the movie book?) or politely asked her to not publish or to delay publishing any spoilers. It would be understandable sicking the MPs on her if she were…oh… say…us. But that is not the case, this is a honest to goodness naturalist blog the Bond production stumbled across not the other way around.
Lucy’s blog is a wonderful collection of photographs and thoughts. She had me at Fantastic Fungi, no seriously she did.
If you are Bond fan who has appreciated these photographs please take the time to let her know.

Special ThanksTo “the Sweeney“
Discuss this in our forum; Wildlife Photographer in trouble for Skyfall Pics

You may have seen the many photographs published online over the past few days of Hankley Common, near Elstead, which have been transformed by the arrival of film crews, trailers and marquees involved in the blockbuster movie Skyfall, the latest in the Bond franchise.
These photographs were taken by nature blogger The Foraging Photographer, who had taken many stunning pics of the set while the Bond crew were filming. Well today she has been firmly warned not to take any more photographs of the set.

Blog interrupted

Weeeeeeell… I don’t know where to start, really. Or indeed where to finish. I arrived at Hankley this morning, with dog and child, friend and dog, expecting our normal walk around the common only to be enlivened by the film shooting. I greeted, in naive innocence, the (lovely) lady on the main security gate, only to have her call after me “…are you [my name]…?”, and tell me that I was in (and had created) a lot of trouble. They kept me there while they radioed the location manager to come and discuss things with me.
As it turns out, I’ve been a wanted woman on Hankley Common since yesterday, when it became apparent that I had breached military byelaw 4(13). On reading and re-reading this byelaw, I can’t say I’m yet entirely clear about how I’ve breached this, but I’m taking them at their word, and certainly the military police were perfectly serious about finding me and arresting me – the policeman I talked to later told me that if they’d found me first I would have been arrested, cuffed and charged. I do wish to extend my apologies to the lady with a cocker spaniel who matched my description, who had some tricky questions to answer this morning!
What did distress me is that I seem to have dropped some of the site crew right in it. This really does upset me, because everyone I’ve spoken to on-site has been absolutely lovely, and I’ve greatly enjoyed having chats with them. I certainly wasn’t trying to get anyone into trouble, nor was I doing anything deliberately surreptitious (except maybe sneaking a bit close to the chapel on Weds, by which time the headstones were already long gone). I have been genuinely enthralled by the development of the set, and the incredible skill displayed therein. I love taking photographs of beautiful things, and, to me, the creation of this fake reality was an amazing thing to witness.
I think I got a bit carried away with the excitement of it all and the enthusiasm of the Bond fans wanting more detail. I didn’t properly consider the fact that the people who were telling me these fascinating titbits were not expecting them to reach such a wide audience. I didn’t expect such a wide audience either! I am genuinely very sorry if I got anyone into trouble. In my opinion, no-one behaved remotely improperly and I’d be most upset if they suffered repercussions due to me sharing stuff on here that was common gossip amongst the Elstead locals and dog walkers.
The upshot of this morning’s events is that I certainly will not be taking any more photographs of the set, nor will I be divulging any more information about the filming or what that indicates about the plot. I have to say that this resulted in me almost chewing my fingers off with frustration over what I saw them filming at the lodge today. Oh my, I can’t tell you how much I want to share the details of what we were all watching through our binoculars!!
Anyhowdyhoo, you poor deprived Bond fans will just have to be content with some older pictures that I took of the set, and some pictures of SHOCK HORROR… NATURE! which was, after all, what my blog was supposed to be in the first place. I must say I’ve had enormous fun doing this blog and riding the unexpected wave of enthusiasm that resulted from the Skyfall stuff. I’d like to say a fond goodbye to y’all, and I hope that just a wee handful of you might continue to visit for pictures and explanations of the stunning beauty we find all around us.
I will include some pictures with this post, and edit it a bit, but mainly I just wanted to get this up there as an apology to anyone I dropped in it with my over enthusiasm

Edited to add:
I just want to make very clear that I did not at any point go anywhere that the public were not free to go, nor was I at any point asked not to take photographs. I did not at any point go inside any fences around the structures which were up during construction. Once the fences were removed, I assumed the boundary to be the ‘flooring’ around the sites (the plastic roadway stuff that protects the ground underneath). Only once did I set foot on that flooring, and that was with permission. There was full public access to the site throughout construction (it’s MoD land), and lots of members of the public taking photos and videos. It was only during filming that the security guys were present. I do feel that if the chapel site was such hot property, then the production team should have made the construction team very aware of this, and put security on the site. It’s not like I was skulking around – I was there with two loud children and a dog!
I was told by the military policeman that I had breached a military byelaw, copies of which are displayed onsite. This is the byelaw in question;
It is prohibited to…  4(13) deposit or distribute, or cause to be deposited or distributed any handbills, leaflets or other literature or printed matter of any description.

All this seems to revolve around the fact that the mailonline bought 8 of my pictures to go into the artice that had already gone up on their site. At the gate I was told  that it’s to do with ‘commercial gain’ and that if I hadn’t received money for the pictures then they wouldn’t have been able to stop me blogging. I don’t know how that relates to the byelaw though. It’s all a bit mystifying really and not at all worth the £200 the mail paid me.

MOD Hankley Byelaws

The Book Bond: OFFICIAL: NO 'SKYFALL' NOVELIZATION (DANG IT)

The Book Bond: OFFICIAL: NO 'SKYFALL' NOVELIZATION (DANG IT): Well, I have a disappointing "exclusive" today. Ian Fleming Publications has confirmed for me that there will NOT be a novelization of Sky...