of London bordering
the Thames were temporarily closed to traffic. Two of our harbour service launches were deployed to manage short-term river closures.

“The hardest thing about working on the Thames was working with the tides,” Emma reveals. “In films they say you should never work with children or animals. It’s fair to say that you can add tides to that list. It’s also fair to say that without PLA’s help in managing river traffic, as well as their advice and expertise, the whole shoot would not have turned out as well as it did.”

It’s unlikely to win an Oscar or any other acting gong at a glittering awards ceremony, but the river Thames has a starring role in the latest James Bond blockbuster.

Action-packed Spectre features London’s waterway in two notable sequences, including an action-packed chase scene filmed at night. Both scenes whizz by when you watch the film, but they actually took months to plan and execute.

Our licensing and harbour service teams worked closely with Eon Productions and Spectre location manager Emma Pill – to ensure the shoot was safe and that there would be minimum disruption to river traffic.

Emma said: “I first met Martin Garside and Ryan Hall from the PLA back in November 2014.

The PLA was a massive help to us. However, filming proved to be a real logistical challenge, lighting the river, working against the clock and making sure we had the right permissions was very complex. We had to light 17 arches along the Thames for the shoot which lasted eight days in total.

“Setting it up was a mammoth task and weight restrictions meant we had to task Livett’s Launches to use two 150ft-high, 90-tonne barge cranes with lights suspended from them. I don’t think the river’s ever been lit up that way before.”

During the climactic river scene, Eon productions had to be granted special permission to fly a helicopter at a low level (about 150ft in the air), while huge areas