London focus for Mission: Impossible – Fallout
In the third of a three-part locations feature focussing on Mission: Impossible – Fallout, KFTV looks more closely at how Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie returned to London.
By Nick Goundry 24 Aug 2018
In the third of a three-part locations feature focussing on Mission: Impossible – Fallout, KFTV looks at how Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie returned to London.
Cruise and McQuarrie had used London as a base for previous Mission: Impossible movie Rogue Nation and for Fallout they returned to Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, north-west of the city.
Various hidden locations in Bishopsgate and Shoreditch in the east of the city stood in for story settings in European cities including Berlin.
London’s iconic central locales were used for scenes set in the capital for a key midpoint foot chase.
Finding himself having to climb to the city’s rooftops, Cruise’s superspy Ethan Hunt crosses the Thames by sprinting across the distinctive solar roof of Blackfriars railway station on the north bank of the river. He then follows his mark at ground level along Bankside towards a showdown on the 99-metre-high chimney of the Tate Modern.
Chris Webster, the Tate’s filming manager, worked with Paramount Pictures to organise what became the first ever shoot on the top of the gallery’s chimney.
“All in all it took about a year from the first initial scouting to actually shooting the scenes,” says Webster, in comments to KFTV.
“There were various ideas and discussions in the early stages about what could be achieved and how this might work.”
A temporary scaffold was set up by the production team towards the top of the chimney as a support structure for the crew that remained out of sight when Cruise was filmed from a helicopter.
“The film crew employed specialist scaffold company Crown and they worked with the Tate Modern’s facilities and buildings team to manage the construction and maintenance of the chimney scaffold,” Webster comments.
“Crown drilled anchor points into the chimney and tested the pull, then built the scaffold from these points – they made a platform near the top so that the crew could access the rooftop safely.”
FilmFixer manages the film office service for Southwark Council, the authority that supervises production in the area.
“This was a complicated shoot that required helicopter licenses from the Civil Aviation Authority, as well as permission from the Met Police for the characters to carry fake weapons,” says Karen Everett, CEO of FilmFixer, in comments to KFTV.
The actual production process on the Tate chimney lasted a tight six days, including prep and clean-up. The shoot itself spanned about six hours on a single day.
In the film, Hunt gets to the top of the chimney by way of an internal industrial lift, which was shot at a separate location.
London remains one of the world’s most popular filming locations for big-budget Hollywood movies, recently drawing level with top US hub Georgia.
Click the links to read KFTV's reports on how Mission: Impossible - Fallout filmed in France and in New Zealand.
Main page image: Paramount Pictures. Tate Modern images: Kelly Jones, film officer at FilmFixer
Various hidden locations in Bishopsgate and Shoreditch in the east of the city stood in for story settings in European cities including Berlin.
London’s iconic central locales were used for scenes set in the capital for a key midpoint foot chase.
Finding himself having to climb to the city’s rooftops, Cruise’s superspy Ethan Hunt crosses the Thames by sprinting across the distinctive solar roof of Blackfriars railway station on the north bank of the river. He then follows his mark at ground level along Bankside towards a showdown on the 99-metre-high chimney of the Tate Modern.
Chris Webster, the Tate’s filming manager, worked with Paramount Pictures to organise what became the first ever shoot on the top of the gallery’s chimney.
“All in all it took about a year from the first initial scouting to actually shooting the scenes,” says Webster, in comments to KFTV.
“There were various ideas and discussions in the early stages about what could be achieved and how this might work.”
A temporary scaffold was set up by the production team towards the top of the chimney as a support structure for the crew that remained out of sight when Cruise was filmed from a helicopter.
“The film crew employed specialist scaffold company Crown and they worked with the Tate Modern’s facilities and buildings team to manage the construction and maintenance of the chimney scaffold,” Webster comments.
“Crown drilled anchor points into the chimney and tested the pull, then built the scaffold from these points – they made a platform near the top so that the crew could access the rooftop safely.”
FilmFixer manages the film office service for Southwark Council, the authority that supervises production in the area.
“This was a complicated shoot that required helicopter licenses from the Civil Aviation Authority, as well as permission from the Met Police for the characters to carry fake weapons,” says Karen Everett, CEO of FilmFixer, in comments to KFTV.
The actual production process on the Tate chimney lasted a tight six days, including prep and clean-up. The shoot itself spanned about six hours on a single day.
In the film, Hunt gets to the top of the chimney by way of an internal industrial lift, which was shot at a separate location.
London remains one of the world’s most popular filming locations for big-budget Hollywood movies, recently drawing level with top US hub Georgia.
Click the links to read KFTV's reports on how Mission: Impossible - Fallout filmed in France and in New Zealand.
Main page image: Paramount Pictures. Tate Modern images: Kelly Jones, film officer at FilmFixer
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