Gun Barrel Sequence
The James Bond film series is a British series of spy films based on the fictional character of MI6 agent James Bond (code designation "007"), who originally appeared in a series of books by Ian Fleming. The gun barrel sequence is the signature device featured in nearly every film of the series. Shot from the point-of-view of a presumed assassin, it features British MI6 agent James Bond walking, turning and then shooting directly at camera, causing blood to run down the screen. The visuals are accompanied by the James Bond Theme, composed by Monty Norman.
Originally designed by Maurice Binder, the sequence has featured in every James Bond film produced by Eon Productions and, although retaining the same basic elements, it has evolved noticeably throughout the series. It is one of the most immediately recognizable elements of the franchise and has featured heavily in marketing material for the films and their spin-offs.
British media historian James Chapman suggests that the sequence is a significant part of the James Bond mythos because it "foregrounds the motif of looking, which is central to the spy genre."
Read more about Gun Barrel Sequence: Description, Origins, Costume, Music, Other Uses, Parodies
Famous quotes containing the words gun, barrel and/or sequence:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969)
“I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch ... and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order ... by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.”
—Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen] (1885–1962)
“It isn’t that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history’s meaning.”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)