Surfer Dude Studios

Well it was inevitable

It would be easy to suggest this project had its origins in The Goodie Never Dies, the student video produced 15 years earlier, but it was as much a result of the lessones learned in delivering the studio logo project.

The experience gained in developing the studio logo was invaluable, and definitely made the prospect of attempting something more polished and professional looking seem entirely possible. After Effects it would seem would be the answer to a nagging doubt fifteen years in the making.

The topic

The Bond gun barrel is probably one of the most iconic pieces of branding in the world. While the official branding is the 007 device, the 007 number that merges with a gun motif, you would be hard pushed to find anyone who does not think of the gun barrel motif over the official 007 icon. With the exception of one or two of the movies (Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace - and even these use barrel motif at some point), all of the official James Bond movies start with a white dot moving left to right accross the screen, this pans out to reveal it is the muzzle of a gun from inside the barrel, it tracks James Bond as he walks right to left across the screen, before he quickly turns and fires, dispatching his would be assailant, whose blood runs down the screen. Give or take a few changes over the years, such as the bullet from James Bond's gun coming towards the audience (Die Another Day, we're thinking of you here), the motif has not changed in over fifty years.

The thing is, it sounds stupid written down, and it's even more stupid when you stop to think about it.

1. Where is Bond at this point? He's in some sort of white room, is it a Tate Modern installation? Why is there nothing in this room?
2. If that's the case, is Bond and his assailant the only people in the room? What's he doing pretending he's not noticed the gun?
3. And then - Ha! I knew all along - Bang take that! At this point the assailant must be thinking "Why didn't I try firing? Why did I take so long with him in my sights to fire?"
4. Then, how does the assailant's blood leak into the gun barrel, it's not flooding in the muzzle, it's just dripping down from, well, anywhere.
5. If the assailant has been shot, how come they don't fall over? If they're wounded at least they'd flinch and the muzzle would point up at the ceiling - imagine that the start of a James Bond film and you're left looking at an Ikea Halogen roof light bulb.
6. If they're wounded how come Bond doesn't fire again, and again, until they do go down, and the last thing you see is the toppled over assailant, lying on the floor, pegging their last, hoping that their many indiscretions and poor life choices that have led them up to this point don't stop them getting into heaven as they bleed to death?
7. And how come for years I thought it was a camera lens?

Implausible as the whole sequence is, it remains iconic branding, a staple of mass media recognised everywhere.

The first attempt

Our first attempt at replicating this famous piece of branding was in 1998 as part of filming The Goodie Never Dies. This was based on a suggestion in Empire magazine for ways of achieving practically famous visual effects. We alternatively used a cardboard toilet roll, kitchen roll, a poster tube, and a carpet roll to film the actor against a white background. The best result was acheived with the poster tube, trimmed down, and held slightly infront of the camera lens to allow some light into the tube so that the curved wrap of the cardboard roll could be seen.

The university flats also had plain, white painted, breeze block walls that in the lower resolution of VHS-C camcorders largely showed up as a plain white surface. It would in fact be in later years when we tried to darken the backgrounds that would run into some serious cinematography headaches, but for the time being, the plain white walls were perfect for the background.

The actor could then simply recreate the walk on, and spin with a little bit of practice to get the timming correct, with no real issue of having a limited space in which to act. However again we did find one issue in that the further he stood away from the camera the harder it had in maintaining focus due to the lower lighting levels due to the cardboard roll over the lens. In the end a comprimise had to be reached for the distance between the camera and performer, so instead of seeing the whole individual, we had to film from the waist up.

The only other major issue with this effect was the lack of blood. It had been anticipated that we could sort this using the basic titling effects in the linear facilities, but these were just far too basic, not really a great step forward from windows paint. Despite various attempts there was nothing that could be realistically achieved. We also had at the time no idea of the proposal by the video society to purchase a digital editing suite that could have made such an effect possible.

The digital effort

So fast forward fifteen years. The noticeable absence of the sequence in the most recent (at the time) Bond films, or to be more accurate, the break in the branding by not starting the movies with them, had made the gun barrel sequence a talking point again. With a little investigation, and with a little bit of building on previous Adobe After Effects experience, I felt a little project combining photoshop and after effects could have a positive return. Originally envisioned as a parody start to an Easter holiday video for the simple fact it would be a good throw-away gag, particularly when combined with the recently completed studio logo.