Since it was around 1967, how easy (or difficult) was it to film this? The same could be asked of Terminator 2 and The Matrix I suppose. Was the technology that was required to make certain scenes created FOR the scene or was it available already and other movies just didn't utilize it?
>>64442109
What do you mean?
>>64442109
some tech was there - matte and animation
some tech was innovated - the cinar projection backdrops (africa backdrops then projected in real time on a light reflective panel) and stargate sequence
kubrick decided not to use blue screen or do a disney and use layered animation cells because he didnt like the black lines and matte distortion (just look at un restored star wars footage). instead, he literally had assistants cut out composites (spaceships and planets etc)and re film on animation cells, so there was no loss of detail. he did this for every fucking frame, which is unbelievable.
>>64442608
meant to say front projection* not back projection
>>64442608
cool article here
http://filmmakermagazine.com/83795-no-green-screen-try-the-kubrickian-front-screen-projection/
nasa basically made the lenses used in barry lyndon specifically for kubrick
>>64442327
Well i mean how difficult at that time was it to shoot, for example, the scene when the guy at the beginning is jogging/exercising in the circular part of the station? And even the scene where the main character blasts into the main station from his little pod after he uses it to manually unlock the door from the outside
>>64442839
>you were kind of in the ball park but not completely m8
carl zeiss made the lenses for nasa.
kubrick wanted the fastest lens' and found that those zeiss were the absolute fastest manufactured lens.
kubrick then modified an old mitchell bnc camera so that the zeiss lense could be mounted.
>>64442851
very difficult.
the scene onboard discovery when poole is jogging around upside is actually done with the set moving and the camera staying in place.
the explosive bolts scene is bowman falling 20 ft attached to piano wires.
>>64442851
really difficult.
the insane tracking shots of poole jogging in the centrafuge were done by a track built into the set (down the middle of the wheel) where the huge 70mm camera was mounted. those long tracking shots really are a kubrick staple.
The scene where bowman blows himself into the airlock was a great stunt. dullea was suspended on wires and dropped like 10 fet into the set. very dangerous.
>>64442109
Kubrick pioneered a lot of at that time unheard-of techniques in 2001. For one thing he built the full-size centrifuge on a rotating mechanism so he could get the long tracking shot following the actor as he ran a full rotation around it.
>>64443617
>unheard-of techniques
Royal Wedding was shot 16 years prior:
http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/24016/a-celebration-of-rotating-movie-sets
>>64443617
>>64443163
>>64443080
Great info thanks!
Didnt think there were any actual adults left on /tv/!
>>64443917
I didn't mean to imply rotating sets had never been done before, but I believe every instance before 2001 involved a rotating square room. It's one thing to have a box that be spun around, it's another thing entirely to have a 30-ton spinning wheel that acts as one of the primary sets in the film.
Not to mention, while he wasn't the first to use front-projection, he arguably used it the best. It was so well-used that people didn't really realize it was used at all. All of the ape scenes, particularly for the time, don't look at all like they were shot on small sound stages in England.
Not to mention not to mention that the ape makeup effects were so good that many of the academy members were apparently unaware that the monkeys were actors at all. Ironically, planet of the apes won the oscar for makeup that year.
Not to mention not to mention not to mention that Kubrick is STILL relatively unrivaled when it comes to merging production design with light design. His use of practical, on set, on camera, lighting was so autistically great that he rarely had to even use supplemental production lights at all.
I'll be goddamned if I can think of someone who thought to use THE GODDAMN FLOOR as the ONLY LIGHTING ELEMENT IN A SET before Kubrick did. Look at that shit. He's got 2 lights on a stand to provide a supplemental key if he needs it, and they're on fucking standby.
>>64445880
>>64446162
This nigga shot an entire movie using FUCKING CANDLELIGHT. Jeez louise.
>>64443942
Here's the rotating set.
>>64445880
>>64446162
>>64446204
literaly stan the man
basedkubrick
>>64446204
>>64446162
I don't think this is something a person can really appreciate without having worked in production, but Kubrick is one of the only motherfuckers ever to consistently use shots and sets that show 3 walls, a floor, and THE FUCKING CEILING, and there'd be a wacky amount of depth too. You'll rarely ever see the ceiling in stuff shot in a studio, because that's where the light grid is. With all the lights needed to fill the room and highlight the subjects. Kubrick completely shit on that convention by designing and building sets where ALL of the lighting was occurring practically.
>>64446162
I've seen the movie like 4 times and I don't think I even noticed that fact about the floor having been the only light source in that scene until (YOU) mentioned it right now, wow.
Great find anon!
>>64442327
By this?
>>64446405
>practical lighting
i remember reading somewhere that on the shining sets, that all the practical lighting was on dimmer switches, so he could adjust and tinker for any light level literally in seconds.
>>64446405
Want to light a set involving 30 actors sitting in a circle the size of a tennis court?
Easy peasy. Build a practical light fixture ring that plays in the shot, with adjustable lighting rigged inside for each subject. Flood the room out by blasting lights through a translucent "big board" that is always in the background.
>>64446405
Why did he do that this way? Isn't it more expensive and a bit more time consuming/complicated? Did he just not want to settle for the ordinary shots or did he actually see a benefit to showing that much of nearly every room?
>>64446622
When shooting on film, where you want to have subjects lit very far away down a long corridor, you can't hit them with lights positioned off camera. He wanted to be able to shoot as big or as deep or whatever else without being restricted by having to figure out a way to get a bunch of production lights in there. He intentionally designed his sets so that he could *essentially* shoot whatever the fuck he wanted without the gaffer (lighting guy) having to even set foot on set. He'd still use production lights when needed, but his theory was to avoid as much of them as possible by creating sets that lit themselves.
>>64446920
star wars 1977 pushed the limits more
>>64446405
The curved space-station location was also forced perspective
>>64446844
it makes perfect sense, really.
you go into a mall or a theatre and those big expanses are always well illuminated. they dont have those huge lighting rigs that most 99 % of movies have, its all there in the architectural design.
imagine walking around a kubrick set. it would be so immersive.
>>64446272
That's really cool
Too wound up now thinking about Kubrick. The point is that it's not just that he innovated one thing or another, but that he innovated the entire process altogether. If he had a shot he wanted to get, that would be impossible using traditional film production techniques, he personally engineered solutions that nobody even considered before. He found ways to take over and merge production departments to create solutions that may seem trivial, and may not even be noticeable, but completely innovated the way that a production can be run.
Sure, he was probably annoyingly OCD, maybe autistic, relatively abusive, overwhelmingly demanding, and an insane micromanager; but he always came in under-or-at budget, innovated technologies (steadicam, front projection, various lenses, production design, etc), and made some of the greatest films ever. He still is the greatest filmmaker in history.
>>64448159
>>64447830
>>64446844
>>64446590
>>64446405
>>64446162
>>64446204
>>64445880
All great info anons.
Now switching directors to Cameron because I want to keep this discussion going, why was he so confident that his Liquid Metal Man in Terminator 2 was filmable when no such thing had been created before at the time?
Why was he the first to do such a thing?
Did he also have to find a way to create the technology to achieve the results he wanted or was the technology already available at that time and just unused?
>>64449095
>why was he so confident that his Liquid Metal Man in Terminator 2 was filmable when no such thing had been created before at the time?
mainly because he had already worked the liquid cgi kinks out in The Abyss
>>64449095
>why was he so confident that his Liquid Metal Man in Terminator 2 was filmable when no such thing had been created before at the time?
Gamble that worked, in the early 90s that was some primo special effects
>Why was he the first to do such a thing?
Art
>Did he also have to find a way to create the technology to achieve the results he wanted or was the technology already available at that time and just unused?
Mix of practical and special effects, I'm sure the tech improved by then but it was CGI and ILM shit
If you really want to see how far-head 2001 was, watch the other movie nominated for SFX the same year as it: Ice Station Zebra.
There is a HUGE difference in effects.
>>64442109
Kubrick and Co did actually develop a new camera lenses to film Barry Lyndon in natural light.
Dario Argento and his crew used to design and build custom rigs on set to film interesting or difficult scenes, but he gets forgotten by people sometimes.
Tenebre probably has the best example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eDtzdKktTw
Opera. Birds-eye view starts around 2:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFpTkZaMsAs
>>64450026
Ah good point!
....
>>64449952
>>64449873
>>64448159
>>64447830
>>64447130
>>64447114
>>64446844
>>64446590
>>64446546
>>64446405
>>64446204
>>64446162
>>64445880
>>64443917
>>64443617
>>64443163
>>64443080
>>64443002
>>64442839
>>64442799
>>64442692
>>64442608
So is it accurate to state that special effects technology took huge leaps forward thanks to 2001, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2, and The Matrix and in this specific order?
I'm sure I'm missing some landmark films.
All pre-year 2000.
>>64450125
Yeah Argento was legit as fuck, and that crane shot from room to room was way ahead of it's time. He often gets discounted, or no one thinks to mention him, because he was doing all this innovative shit but it was being put in a bunch of schlocky horror movies. Like he does a crazy long crane sequence, all to build up to a chick walking around with a titty out
>>64450314
Shitty thing about the Matrix was that they innovated the "bullet time" technology where you have a sequence of cameras next to each other, but it was too late to have much of a lasting impact on movies. Even they abandoned the rig they made for the sequels, because by that time it had been decided that making shit up with cg was cheaper and easier. In the long run the technological advances from the Matrix were a lot more significant in shit like sports broadcasting than they ended up being in movies.
>>64450514
Wow that's terribly unfortunate
>>64450314
And it's weird with Jurassic Park and T2. Idk that the cgi stuff was necessarily a huge leap forward as much as they figured out how best to use the shit that had at that point been developed.
Like JP cgi looks really good because it was used largely in dark and/or wet scenes where the shitty cgi texturing and everything was able to be hidden. And the liquid metal in T2 was something that had already been developed in The Abyss, so it wasn't "new" necessarily.
It's interesting because the late-90's, early-00's are chalk fucking full of big budget movies with cartoonishly shitty cgi. It's like the very few movies that managed to use the tech efficiently "inspired" studios to try and use the tech out of convenience, and now movie history will always have a stank of ~20 years of movies with really bad cgi. I guess the same could probably be said about stop-motion and a bunch of other technological advances that a few did right and a whole lot failed at trying to copy.
>>64450514
and now that cg looks laughable.
>>64450919
I remember being 11 or so and watching jurassic Park on cinema, that first dinosaur scene was the first "realistic" cg I saw instead of looking it at tv indiferently. Millenials probably don't have that.
Anyway, it has so much preproduction animated in stopmo that was probably used as reference and cool animatronics, it still looks great.
>>64450919
Yeah true i suppose you have a point there.
>>64450514
I remember reading about bullet time back before The Matrix came out and being super excited. Didn't Volvo or someone used an early prototype to shoot part of an ad or was that later?
>>64450314
I would say 2001 was decades ahead of its time in terms of production and SFX.
If money were no object you'd still need to create something that is practical and, most importantly, can be done well enough in a fucking finished product. You can't use tech that doesn't exist, you need to build it.
All that said, 2001 did not necessarily set the standard for film industry. Kubrick, in spite of all the shit he gets, was a visionary through and through. He would make Michael Bay his bitch if he were alive.
Lucas wasn't the father of fantastic SFX. Kubrick was.
>>64449095
>>64449873
I've always seen Cameron as a more competent George Lucas with a more socially-minded agenda
The only issue is, his movies end up having technological and not cultural impacts. Like the Abyss or Avatar,
>>64452539
It just stuns me whenever someone is able to do something so extraordinary at a time when nobody else was able to.
Like what kind of mindset does someone need to have in order to set out to do something so unheardof at that time? Or at any time for that matter?
It happens a lot more than I can recall that's for certain.
How brash and brazen does one have to be in order to achieve what 2001 did at that time? Even though it was CLEARLY ahead of its time.
>>64453265
That's a well stated point you just made about Cameron's films (such as the blatant "Dances with Wolves" ripoff "Avatar") having little to no impact on societal issues.
