Maurice Binder
| Maurice Binder | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 4, 1918 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | April 9, 1991 (aged 72) London, England |
| Cause of death | Lung cancer |
| Occupation | Title designer |
Maurice Binder (December 4, 1918 – April 9, 1991) was an American film title designer best known for his work on 14 James Bond films including the first, Dr. No (1962) and for Stanley Donen's films from 1958.
He was born in New York City, but mostly worked in Britain from the 1950s onwards. He did his first film title design for Stanley Donen's Indiscreet (1958). The Bond producers first approached him after being impressed by his title designs for the Donen comedy film The Grass Is Greener (1960). Binder also provided sequences for Donen for Charade (1963) and Arabesque (1966), both accompanying music by Henry Mancini.
Binder created the signature gun barrel sequence for the opening titles of the first Bond film, Dr. No (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 he died 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 known for featuring women performing a variety of activities such as dancing, jumping on a trampoline, or shooting weapons in his work. Both sequences are trademarks and staples of the James Bond films. Maurice Binder was succeeded by Daniel Kleinman as the title designer for GoldenEye (1995).
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