"In the pre-credit sequence, Bond's Aston Martin sprays the villains, and the screen fills with water. I thought it could lead into the girls swimming around, so I shot them in an underwater tank, in silhouette. These were two gals who swam professionally, in nightclub tanks, but they said they didn't want to swim nude. I told them that if they wore bikinis, it wouldn't quite work. As a compromise they agreed to makeup as dark as possible. Then they walked out on the deck of the tank, absolutely nude and said: "This is not us. We're unrecognizable." We photographed them underwater against white panel and I did the bubbles against a black velvet background. It was all shot in black and white and I put the colour in optically."

Maurice Binder

After the global success of 'Goldfinger', it was decided the next film in the series would be filmed for the first time in anamorphic widescreen (Panavision - 2.35 : 1) to give it the epic look.

The previous three Bond films used only a spherical lens with an aspect ratio of 1.85 : 1 (US) / 1.66: 1 (Europe). The original gun barrel had featured Bob Simmons on black and white film.

The 'Thunderball' gun barrel was filmed with Sean Connery on colour film.