Eon Productions

Sometimes the things that go down in history are the product of lots of hard work — and sometimes they are the result of a moment of genius. The gun-barrel sequence that opens Bond movies is closer to the latter. Maurice Binder, the title designer who worked on most Bond movies from Dr. No to Licence to Kill, happened to have some circular white stickers — meant to be price tags — and thought they would be a good stand-in for gunshot holes. So in about 20 minutes, he put together a mock-up of the white circles transitioning into the view through a gun barrel. The filming took a few hours, with Sean Connery’s body double (Bob Simmons) and a real gun barrel, belonging to a prop-shop gun that was taken apart and filmed through with a pinhole camera. The sequence was later reshot with Connery.

(MORE: Watch the First Minute of All 22 James Bond Films)

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