Maurice Binder - James Bond

James Bond

Binder created the signature gun barrel sequence for the opening titles of the first Bond film, Dr. No, in 1962. Binder originally planned to employ a camera sighted down the barrel of a .38 calibre gun, but this caused some problems. Unable to stop down the lens of a standard camera enough to bring the entire gun barrel into focus, Binder created a pinhole camera to solve the problem and the barrel became crystal clear.

Binder described the genesis of the gun barrel sequence in the last interview he recorded before his death in 1991:

That was something I did in a hurry, because I had to get to a meeting with the producers in twenty minutes. I just happened to have little white, price tag stickers and I thought I'd use them as gun shots across the screen. We'd have James Bond walk through and fire, at which point blood comes down onscreen. That was about a twenty-minute storyboard I did, and they said, "This looks great!"

At least one critic has also observed that the sequence recalls the gun fired at the audience at the end of The Great Train Robbery (1903).

Binder is also best known for women performing a variety of activities such as dancing, jumping on a trampoline, or shooting weapons. Both sequences are trademarks and staples of the James Bond films. Maurice Binder was succeeded by Daniel Kleinman as the title designer for 1995's GoldenEye.

Prior to GoldenEye, the only James Bond movies for which he did not create the opening title credits were From Russia with Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964), both of which were designed by Robert Brownjohn.

  • Dr. No (1962)
  • From Russia with Love — gun barrel sequence only (reused from Dr. No) (1963)
  • Goldfinger — gun barrel sequence only (reused from Dr. No) (1964)
  • Thunderball (1965)
  • You Only Live Twice (1967)
  • On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
  • Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
  • Live and Let Die (1973)
  • The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
  • The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
  • Moonraker (1979)
  • For Your Eyes Only (1981)
  • Octopussy (1983)
  • A View to a Kill (1985)
  • The Living Daylights (1987)
  • Licence to Kill (1989)

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Famous quotes containing the words james and/or bond:

    “Where liberty dwells there is my country.”
    —Anonymous. Latin phrase.

    Adopted as a motto by U.S. patriot and orator James Otis (1725-1783)

    “Man’s characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience superior to his own, the superiority of which he feels. Because the greater, better part of his existence transcends the body, he escapes the body’s yoke, but is subject to that of society.”
    —Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)