How James Bonds Gun Barrel Opening Was Made (Before CGI)

How James Bond’s Gun Barrel Opening Was Made (Before CGI)

The James Bond franchise’s gun barrel opening is one of the most famous in cinematic history, but required some innovation in the era before CGI.

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How James Bonds Gun Barrel Opening Was Made (Before CGI)

Here’s how James Bond’s iconic gun barrel opening sequence was filmed in the days before CGI was commonplace. Whenever a new James Bond film is released, fans have come to expect the reprisal of certain consistent elements throughout the decades. The overly-specific martini order, the outlandish gadgets, Bond girls, Aston Martins, and the “Bond, James Bond” greeting are just a few of the tidbits to look out for when settling down with a Bond film. Another standard feature is the gun barrel opening sequence, with Bond positioned down the end of long tunnel, a gunshot ringing out and crimson red blood flooding the screen.

The intro perfectly captures the action, violence, danger, style and secrecy of the James Bond character, and although the sequence has evolved with each incarnation of 007, the basic structure has more or less remained in place ever since Dr. No hit theaters in 1962.The version of the gun barrel intro movie-goers will see when No Time To Die (hopefully) arrives later this year is a mostly digital construction, but this obviously wasn’t an option in the early 1960s. As such, James Bond had to dip into his innovative bag of tricks in order to first create the shot’s intended effect.

While Dr. No was directed by Terence Young, the task of filming the opening sequence fell to a specialist film title designer known as Maurice Binder, whose work on Bond would form a cinematic legacy. Somewhat surprisingly, however, the arrangement of the sequence came about very quickly, with a rough draft put together 20 minutes prior to a meeting with Bond’s producers. When it came time to craft the actual intro sequence, a lack of digital alternatives meant using a genuine gun barrel was the most logical solution. The gun itself is widely believed to be a 38. caliber, but Trevor Bond, who worked alongside Binder on the sequence, claims in Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films (Ajay Chowdhury and Matthew Field, 2015) that the firearm used was actually a .45 Colt British service revolver.

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The use of a genuine weapon provided the signature rifling that runs all the way down the tunnel-like shot towards Bond himself. Filming in sepia, Binder first attempted to use a standard camera pointed down the barrel, but this technique created problems with keeping in focus. Instead, the finished version saw Binder switch to a small pinhole camera poked through a piece of black paper and placed down the gun’s barrel, providing a photograph with far superior clarity. Because the gun barrel sequence would only feature Bond as a silhouette, a stuntman by the name of Bob Simmons stood in for Sean Connery.

In terms of sound, fans will notice that before the gunshot and famous theme music kick in, the barrel sequence is accompanied by the vaguely familiar sounds of an early computer. Binder added this as an allusion towards Dr. No’s evil scheme in the movie, and the sounds themselves were provided by, in Binder’s own words, “a little old lady in Surrey” who had been experimenting with the possibilities of electronic sound.

This behind-the-scenes tale perhaps isn’t as auspicious as one might think given the current status of the James Bond franchise as an international movie juggernaut. And while modern sequences no longer have to resort to pinhole cameras and proper guns, Maurice Binder’s original 20-minute brainwave remains intact over 50 years later, and has played a major part in making 007 a cinematic legend.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/james-bond-gun-barrel-opening-sequence-how-cgi/

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