![]() ![]() His settings are darker, his use of weapons largely stripped of their innuendos and presented as instruments of actual danger. As such, his sequences often address the emotional currents of the film more directly and reflect its danger more literally. Unlike the sequences of Binder and Brownjohn, which were largely founded in craft and euphemism, Kleinman's additionally incorporated a narrative element, albeit as abstract as their visual compositions. Kleinman’s successive titles further evolved the format, trading chemicals for pixels as new technologies allowed. It was by all accounts a more ambitious effort than past sequences, taking full advantage of new production tools and adding a third dimension to the template, giving Binder's trademark scale differences a spatial relationship though parallax. By fate or design, however, the hiatus proved an ideal time for the franchise to reinvent itself for the post-Cold War digital age, and Kleinman's fresh eye on the titles would further EoN’s cause.Īs Bond titles are as much a product of their time as they are a visual statement about the film, Kleinman's Goldeneye sequence was very much aligned with the new direction of the franchise: modern, relevant, big. ![]() While only six years had lapsed between Binder's last and Kleinman's first sequences, it was a millennia in digital years the tech revolution had overgrown Hollywood, leading to a steady flow of visual effects-heavy blockbusters inching ever further into Bond's turf. ![]() Kleinman upheld the tradition of the Bond sequence as set down by Binder and Robert Brownjohn (1963's From Russia with Love and 1964's Goldfinger), but his background in shortform direction and modern post-production introduced the format to an entirely new bag of tricks. Perhaps more importantly, it gave EoN a glimpse of what a post-Binder Bond sequence could look like in 1995, Kleinman was nominated as the new Bond title director, beginning with the Brosnan-fronted franchise reboot Goldeneye. License to Kill’s theme song was a hit in the UK, and Kleinman’s video saw heavy rotation on MTV and elsewhere. A veteran music video director with over a hundred videos under his belt, Kleinman's experimental techniques and affection for technology seemed a perfect match for the job, and while he never met Binder while working on the video, his influence was very apparent, employing several telltale 007 title sequence tropes including window mattes, scale-independent compositions and sultry femme fatales. It was on Binder's final Bond film, License to Kill (1989) that EoN commissioned Daniel Kleinman to direct the video for Gladys Knight's theme song of the same name. EoN’s first proper music video was Rita Coolidge's All Time High, the theme song for Octopussy (1983), beginning a trend that would become a cornerstone of the franchise's marketing campaign. ![]() Ironically, their first such venture was a title sequence itself: For Your Eyes Only in 1981, directed by Binder, featuring Sheena Easton performing her theme song from within Bond's world. Acknowledging the format's reach, Bond's production company EoN joined the circus, commissioning videos for their theme songs independent of the film's title sequence, often loaded with scenes from the film itself, thus doubling as trailers. Fierce competition between record labels, increasingly eccentric musical acts and unprecedented album sales afforded directors heavy creative license and control over their product. In only a few years' time, music videos had Bond title sequences beat at their own game, with the popularity of the format attracting first-string talent, new ideas and technologies. From the '60s onwards, the Bond theme song, and its title sequence by proxy, have become synonymous with rock n' roll's biggest (or sometimes, trendiest) acts, and in doing so lent credibility to the MTV-led music video explosion of the early-to-mid-'80s. In the last interview before his passing in 1991, longtime Bond titles director Maurice Binder observed that Bond sequences were the likely precursors to the modern day music video, in that they blended experimental filmmaking and pop culture into a format perfectly suited for pop music. ![]()
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