Sherlock!
Sherlock...
When we started work on Series 2,
we thought... We knew how we're going to end it.
We knew that we'd throw Sherlock Holmes off a building, in effect,
and he'd plunge to his death.
And we wouldn't cheat, like Doyle did. That we would see him die
and he would die, as he surely must, in Watson's arms.
He would definitely be dead and then the very last shot...
He isn't. (CHUCKLES)
Sherlock Holmes will just be standing there.
And we wouldn't tell people how.
It was so clear that he had died.
You know, it was just very, very clear and then you see him at the end
and say, "Well, how did that happen?"
- Oh, many theories. - Oh, my God!
We have many, many theories.
What people don't realise about the coat is it is, in fact, a flying suit.
When you fall further than about, mmm...
a hundred feet, you then can basically start to glide.
I did think he might have had like a double
or maybe he landed on a ledge or caught onto a ledge.
I think the crowd was in on it.
- Yeah. - Yeah, I think they were all in on it.
In the street, people would stop me and say, "How did he do it?"
And at that stage, I wasn't being cute, I really didn't know.
WATSON: He's my friend.
Some people use medication to stop their pulse for a while.
So you're still breathing and everything but your pulse stops.
Also like probably the ball under the arm thing.
It became a national talking point for months, really.
You're seeing it from John's point of view and john hits his head
just before this happened.
He's hearing Sherlock saying that he's going to kill himself.
It's all in his head.
So I reckon Sherlock throws Moriarty off the roof.
Molly's already on it 'cause Sherlock's gone to see Molly earlier.
I've literally spent
a year and a half going, "I can't possibly tell you"
to, you know, thousands of people.
The theories were thick and fast. They came thick and fast.
Some of them very good and some of them barmy.
Gravity boots, an enormous, inflatable arse.
- Pegasus. - Yeah.
- The Tardis. - The Tardis.
The levels of ingenuity are rather impressive, I think.
- Oh, massively so. - Yeah.
Sherlock falls down,
however, at the bottom, there is
a plate or like a slab of concrete or something,
that's removed, there's a net underneath, he falls onto the net,
he's fine.
As John's getting up.
He gets up, someone, I don't know, possibly Molly or one of her friends,
pushes the pavement back into place.
He lies down, lots of blood spread over. It's been done before. It's not a trick.
If people spent this much time on actual deaths and actual murders,
we'd have everything solved in two weeks.
You know, 'cause people really did want to know how he did it.
The fun thing is, and what people have actually got into is,
is if you watch "The Reichenbach Fall",
there are elements there that point in certain directions
and things that Sherlock does.
Obviously, it had to be, it had to be possible.
What we also realised at that point was we would need
a very, very good explanation, so we got help in.
Got an expert in on how would you stage such a thing,
how would you pull off such a deception?
There are, urn, Sherlock suicide experts
who are consultable.
These are consulting suicide experts... (LAUGHS)
Consulting suicide experts...
He lives in 2222, Baker Street.
-(LAUGHING) - It's right at the top.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
Sherlock jumps off
the top of Barts and john Watson is behind the ambulance station
and everyone thought he was dead. We know he's not.
There are several explanations that are happening during this episode.
We did one of them yesterday, which was
kind of inside one of the fans' heads.
We're now doing version three,
which is the correct one.
Which is him jumping onto an airbag,
um, whilst John is behind the ambulance station, so he can't see.
And the air bag gets whisked away.
Then we're doing version number one, which is a fake one.
Which is him doing a bungeejump,
which takes him back up through a window.
Obviously, I've got three other cameras shooting the same thing.
STEVE LAWES: Two big stunts to do today.
We've got four cameras out. Lots of different angles,
plus a phantom camera.
Today is really about the stunts.
Going UP-
Looks different from up here, doesn't it?
WOMAN: Action!
It is perfect
because Benedict's probably going to do it from round about that height,
so being his double, I've got to see
how it's going to be for him, not just for me,
we want it to be as comfortable for Ben as possible.
Action!
Go!
Once we've done it with a stuntman, Benedict comes and does
what he's comfortable with and that's the bit I'll use.
Action!
Was that all right?
His heart was beating. Checked his pulse. He was, he was...
a top man.
He's doing it again.
Put your shoulder to the front.
Right foot slightly forward as you take the fall.
Three, two, one,
action!
- He's off, go, go! - He's off!
There's no major shots planned in CGI.
For this it's going to mainly all be caught in camera,
but if something needs to be taken out or put in,
then that's what we're here for.
The bungee cord sequence,
where he's falling down the outside of the building,
my job was to get rid of the wires
from the actual scene and replace it with a CG bungee cord.
The way that we did this was actually to take still frames
of the building when there was actually no Sherlock there,
paint out the wires
and then it was just simple matter of rotoring, basically creating a layer
of Benedict Cumberbatch and putting that back over the image
with the CG bungee cord cable.
The bungee cord is totally CG, totally fake
and it's lit and textured in such a way that it looks real.
DEGUARA: One thing about Sherlock that's great
is that they really do try and capture it all in camera
with very few enhancements from us.
For the sequence of shots
where Benedict Cumberbatch is coming in through the window,
we shot in front of a green screen.
The initial shot we used a stuntman who files through a sugar glass window,
which has a very similar effect to glass.
In the second shot, we did use Benedict Cumberbatch.
The glass elements that you see on the top
have actually been placed on him and on his jacket and his hair,
so that as he flies through the window in the studio,
it actually interacts with him.
We've also shot a plate of a real glass window
so that when they were put together
in the final shot, it actually looks like Benedict is
flying through a real glass window.
WOMAN: Everyone happy? MAN: Yeah.
WOMAN: Action!
Maintaining the continuity when it...
It obviously goes from sunshine in the morning to rain at night.
You have to decide a kind of a base that you're happy with.
Tomorrow it's supposed to be sunny
but we're going to have a wet floor, so we 're going to wet the floor down again
so it matches what we've shot today.
Sometimes there is a little bit of rain in the air.
Sometimes you see it, sometimes you don't.
You have to be sort of like knowledgeable about
what you can get away with and what you can't.
SUE VERTUE: It's very hard to keep things secret
if you're shooting outside.
I saw one bit of press saying, um...
It was when we had the dummy with the face mask on.
The press said, "The stunts are so dangerous, they have to use dummies."
And they're trying to piece together
all the bits that we're shooting and they can't tell what's real
or what's, you know, if they see somebody come down with a...
a rope on, they can't tell if that's a stunt and a safety rope
or whether that was how he survived the fall.
This is what the papers are saying
about the return of Sherlock.
"Benedict jumper-batch." -Good.
- Good. - Yes, we like it. Very good.
"Sherlock, don't be a dummy."
"Sherlock's a fall guy."
Ah, which is pretty clever.
What's very useful about this is that
in order to film any stunt,
we have to have Benedict falling off various rigs.
And obviously we have to use stunt dummies and...
So actually none of it is really in any way contradictory.
When you pretend to throw someone off the building in a show,
you obviously have to make sure they don't die.
- Yes, apparently... - Unless it's the last day,
-in which case it's absolutely fine. - You can do what you like.
My favourite bit of this shoot is when, uh...
Because it was starting to pour down and Benedict was on a wire,
we had to give him an umbrella.
And there was a sudden rush of flash guns going off.
- It was like oh, he's going... -The old flying umbrella trick.
GATISS: And it really, really does look like Mary Poppins. It's fantastic.
Benedict was very keen to do all these stunts
and he really hurled himself off there with abandon
but I think I read lots of them saying...
"An insider says Benedict was visibly shaking" and it's, like,
it's really not fair.
I've noticed that the insider is frequently wrong.
- Yes! - And thinks the same thing
as the person who writes the article.
- I'm just putting it out there. - Who is the insider?
You know when you say "they've invented this thing",
you think, eventually I start thinking,
who are they?
-(CHUCKLES) - Maybe there is a they.
There's actually a they.
"No hit, Sherlock. It's magic!"
This is Derren Brown,
apparently putting Martin under the 'fluence.
Yeah, it could just be that Martin,
he's a very, very famous film star
and he may need a forehead massage from a celebrity of his choice.
I think that's reasonable.
The truth of it is Martin was just very tired that day.
MOFFAT: Yeah, he was.
We chopped in a few sort of red herrings of our own, really,
which was fun.
It was just quite nice just to throw in a few sort of things
that just weren't going to happen at all.
When you read the script, which would be the same as when you watch it,
you're, within two minutes, you're presented with an explanation.
And obviously, you're going, "Oh, my God, this is how he did it!
"This is amazing."
And then he's on a bungee jump and you go, "That's a bit...
"Is that for real? Is that it?"
The writing seems to be full of red herrings and that's...
You know, the ultimate red herring is how he did it or how he didn't do it.
Sherlock, you are going to tell me how you did it?
How you jumped off that building and survived?
Well, I think people got quite near with some of the theories, to be honest.
Very near. I mean, Molly Hooper's involvement and the squash ball.
Homeless network. I think people have been quite canny about it.
It's just sewing it all together.
And actually seeing it, you know, even if it is, "Ah, I knew it!"
What we tried to do, really, in Episode 1
is sort of have a running commentary on the fact
that there are all these amazing elaborate theories out there.
A bungee rope, a mask, Derren Brown?
Two years and the theories keep getting more stupid.
How many more have you got for me today?
Sherlock Holmes is pretty well known.
He's well known in our fictional London.
So there would be fictional Londoners going, "How did he survive?"
We sort of teased the truth quite a lot in it.
But equally, also acknowledged the fact that when,
when you're finally at the right place in the script to get the revelation,
Sherlock tells Anderson how he did it.
Anderson who has now become a sort of de facto fan of Sherlock's
says, "Hmm, bit disappointed."
And he in fact says, "That's not the way I would have done it."
But like all great things it's actually the mystery
that is the fun thing, not the prosaic explanation.
No, I'm not saying it's not clever but...
SHERLOCK: What?
Bit disappointed.
Oh, everyone's a critic.
MOFFAT: And then, just when you think you're safe,
you're suddenly invited to wonder if any of it was true.
GATISS: Yeah, yeah.
Because in fact, Sherlock being Sherlock, why would he tell you?
There's a wonderful, um,
Sherlock Holmes film, jack the Ripper film,
called A Study in Terror with john Neville.
And there's a fantastic bit in the end. Sherlock has revealed who the Ripper is,
I won't spoil it.
And he's trapped in a burning building with Adrienne Corri.
And he really, absolutely, cannot get out.
And he's surrounded by flames on all sides and it's impossible to escape.
And it cuts to him back in Baker Street.
Watson says, "How did you do it? How did you get out of there?"
He says, "Well, you know, I'm well known to be indestructible."
And that's it.
To paraphrase that, "that's what heroes do".
So we just popped that in.
You know my methods, john. I am known to be indestructible.
GATISS: We tried to play with it massively.
Then, at the right point in the script, say "this is how it was done.
We've also left out the possibility that Sherlock is lying his arse off.
just as we are.
-(CHUCKLES) - Even now.
(LAUGHING)