What do you see, when you watch "2001?"

[Nicolas Courdouan]

I saw a 70mm print in Dublin less than a year ago, and it was so flawless that I am still wondering whether it could have been a new generation of prints or a print that had been kept safe and hidden for all those years. The colours were superb, and not a single scratch or hair to report. Not ONE.

Edited September 27, 2014 by Nicolas Courdouan

[Phil Rhodes]

(I've always assumed that 65mm was an origination format and 70mm was a release format, presumably to accommodate the sound track

 

Correct.

 

I once did some work for a scanner manufacturer. One day they had a brand new 70mm release print of 2001 in order to extract some stills for a book that was being published. Because the scanner was designed to handle 8, 16, 35 and 65, they'd had to custom-machine a gate assembly, and manually feed the film through as none of the film handling rollers would accommodate it. Not so bad, since they only wanted a few frames, but still a massive undertaking even to find the right scenes.

 

P

[Mark Dunn]

I was privileged to see 2001 in 70mm on January 1st, 2001 in the company of a couple of Kubricks. I think the print was new, although the NFT have a reputation for looking after them. It did look a bit less clinical than those stills- nothing like most other pictures of the period, though.

Now MGM in the UK won't even tell a booker whether they'll get a print or a DCP.

Edited September 27, 2014 by Mark Dunn

[Ed Davor]

This doesn't look like a very good transfer to me. Someone mentioned that it's one of the early Blu-rays. In those early days of Blu-ray I think a lot of them were made using older HD transfers that were made for DVD editions. Doing a HD tape for DVD is one thing, but IMO a lot of these transfers don't look that good on Blu-ray. There's a lot of noise reduction that eats up both the grain and detail in the image, and a lot of edge-enhancement. This is symptomatic of those older HD transfers. The trend changed later on when brand new transfers were started being made for Blu-ray editions, sometimes even using 4K scans. These seem to fill up the frame with useful detail as well as feature a natural (though not distracting) grain structure. I've seen 35mm movies from 60's that have more detail in the frame on Blu-ray than this edition of 2001, which is 65mm and should have even more detail. Such good transfers often don't need edge-enhancement, at least not that extreme, to provide a decent visual experience for the viewer. I think 2001 deserves a new Blu-ray edition, from a 2K or 4K source.

Edited September 27, 2014 by Ed Davor

[Carl Looper]

The 'hotel' scene at the end of the film is interesting in terms of lighting. The floor becomes the dominant light source. I recall the early days of computer graphics, where recreating a scene like this was not yet possible, but something to achieve. It was eventually achieved through what is now called "radiosity". Modelling how indirect light is redistributed within a scene.

 

The hotel scene can be interpreted in terms of a virtual reality created by aliens. In the book the room is something the aliens have created to make the astronaut "feel at home". A simulation of a room. But an imperfect one. If you were to look at a packet of cornflakes closely, the details would not be there. The idea being that aliens had intercepted TV images and reconstructed the room from such images.

 

The great thing in Kubrick's interpretation is that it very much invokes a sense of a synthesised room, but not using any brillo box dot printed reality as Clarke might have implied. Instead it's the opposite. A sense of infinite computational capabilities. At the same time, the room is lit in an unfamiliar way. The floor lighting inverts the sense of where light should be. As if such had more to do with the artistic temperament of the aliens than any inability to "get it right". Or that sense in which the direction of light is arbitrary. Just as the sense of up and down in space becomes arbitrary.

 

There is no correct orientation in space.

 

And synthesising radiosity. A peice of cake for Kubrick and his aliens. It would take humans another twenty years to synthesise such.

 

C

[Ed Davor]

The great thing about 2001 is that there is no 'correct' interpretation since it deals with themes which are beyond human experience (and that includes the author). Is it alien CG? Or induced hallucinations? Or something beyond the material world itself? I like a movie that makes you ask a lot of questions on the way home from the theater.

 

Either way, the star-fetus calls for a birth of a new human, a person of greater awareness perhaps, greater ethics, or something beyond human itself perhaps.

Edited September 27, 2014 by Ed Davor

[David Mullen ASC]

I've been lucky over the years to have seen "2001" in 70mm about a dozen times. Once was a 70mm print owned by USC from the original release and was quite faded to pink, but razor sharp. The rest were newer prints with good colors. I think the blu-ray is close in color to the look of the prints.

 

The last time I saw the movie was in a 2K DCP and that was a bit disappointing, it basically was the blu-ray on a medium screen at the Museum of the Moving Image. But it was better than many of the 35mm scope prints out there that I've seen, but those probably also suffered by being shown in small run-down art cinemas and university screening rooms; the 70mm presentations were almost all in big first-run theaters.

 

I've probably sat through this movie over 30 times in theaters, not counting the times I've watched it on home video.

[John Holland]

This thread started about about 5251 and why it has the look it has /had . It applied to all to all Eastman Stocks 5254 100asa as far as i think their best ever stock were processed ECN 1 a slower develop process. ECN11 was introduced with 5247 in the late 70's a much faster hotter bath process. Although finer grain lost the great colour and latitude of the older stocks .

[Ed Davor]

Are you sure 5251 had much latitude? I'm not an expert, but I think one of the trademark of those old stocks was low shadow detail and almost reversal-like latitude which forced cinematographers to use a lot of fill lights, even in exteriors. Not speaking for 5254 though.

[John Holland]

Yes those stocks had wide latitude the Kodak Print stocks were pretty rubbish though.

[Ed Davor]

Looking the 5251's curve, it seems it has a lot bigger toe than 5247. 5250 is very similar to 5251. So I'm not sure about this. Did you communicate with someone that used 5251 back in the day (or used it yourself?)

[John Holland]

It was the first Colour Neg i used ,but very soon replaced by 5254.

[David Mullen ASC]

While I don't think the color negative stocks had the latitude of Vision-3, they were not high contrast like reversal. The real issue was printing stocks and dupe stocks in terms of added contrast; even dye transfer printing, which avoided an IP/IN, was a bit high in contrast. Plus this was the era of drive-in movies and film chain transfers for television, both of which preferred flatter brighter lighting.

 

http://extension765.com/sdr/17-gordon-willis

This interview with Gordon Willis is interesting in this context -- he complains about modern technology having too much information in the shadows, it's harder to get things to fall-off to black. Of course, this is also the result of greater sensitivity, we work at light levels where natural ambience has a greater contribution to the exposure and lighting effect, which is nice in many ways when you prize naturalism but hard when you are aiming for a more dramatic effect.

[Ed Davor]

It's impressive to hear someone say they actually used it. Usually it's just conjecture.

 

It was the first Colour Neg i used ,but very soon replaced by 5254.

[Ed Davor]

I didn't mean literally like reversal. Reversal has a different density range altogether. But to my eyes, a frame of "modern" Ektachrome when scanned has about as much shadows detail as some of those old movies (I'm judging by blu-ray transfers though, not actual prints). Perhaps the latitude that John Holland speaks about was more in the highlights range?

 

While I don't think the color negative stocks had the latitude of Vision-3, they were not high contrast like reversal.

[Ed Davor]

Here is a couple of examples for study. This is from a 4K Imagica scan of the early Bond movies.

 

Edited September 28, 2014 by Ed Davor

[John Holland]

Examples of what ? Two shots of a front lit as Kodak said type shot sun over your shoulder . Sorry but any good Dop would notshoot a scene like this both of these Bond movies are badly shot ! You shoot into the sun expose for the shadows . Think you should check out a few movies photographed by David Watkin, Ossie Morris, same era same stock .

[Ed Davor]

Examples of a random image exposed on 5251, not of works of art

[David Mullen ASC]

You'd have to see an uncorrected log file to see what shadow detail existed on the negative, a positive can have the black level set as deep as you feel looks good in a digital color-correction, plus if there was some fading and fogging of the negative due to age, the colorist may have hidden it by adding more contrast.

 

I'm sure the negative stocks were more contrasty than modern stocks, but most of the contrast you see in old movies was due to other things, duplicating stocks, print stocks, not to mention that if the negative had faded or disappeared, then either new copies or scans were made from color dupes, or from b&w separations, which could have more contrast to them than the original negative.

[Kevin Grossett]

Does anyone have a link to an in depth discussion about 2001's cinematography? I tried searching but the old thread seems to have been deleted...

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't recall a specific thread about "2001" but discussions of elements of the movie come up all the time.

[Mark Dunn]

'2001' is so much more than a cameraman's picture, of course, but it is a cameraman's picture.

I appreciate that that is a sweeping generalisation, but it no doubt repays endless study.

Not that I'll be studying it endlessly because after its disastrous first TV screening by the BBC I vowed never to watch in on the small screen again and have kept that promise for 35 years.

Might relent now we have a big HDTV, though.

Edited September 30, 2014 by Mark Dunn

[Doug Palmer]

'2001' is so much more than a cameraman's picture, of course, but it is a cameraman's picture.

I appreciate that that is a sweeping generalisation, but it no doubt repays endless study.

Not that I'll be studying it endlessly because after its disastrous first TV screening by the BBC I vowed never to watch in on the small screen again and have kept that promise for 35 years.

Might relent now we have a big HDTV, though.

2001 is one of my greats although I have only seen it a few times, many years ago. I was spoiled by the 70mm Cinerama presentations, and remember being slightly disappointed watching the 35mm prints however good they were. So I should imagine HD would also be a letdown. Apart from the enveloping experience of a vast screen I think Kubrick probably edited 2001 with this in mind. The tempo is too slow for smaller screens.

Edited September 30, 2014 by Doug Palmer

[George Ebersole]

In terms of composition Kubrick was a photojournalist by trade, and he sets up his scenes usually as if he were taking a long exposure still.

 

In the moon shot, if you look at the astronaut's helmets you can see the overhead egg-crates reflected in them.

 

p.s. I thought a wide angle lens by definition was a deep focus lens.

[David Mullen ASC]

No, wide-angle is not the same as deep focus. If you focus on something close to a wide-angle lens at a wide aperture, the background will fall out of focus just as with longer focal lengths. "True" deep focus is a shot where objects are in focus from near to far.

 

Wide-angle lenses can give a pseudo deep focus effect at wider apertures in a wide or medium sized shot simply because the background recedes so quickly on a wide-angle lens that it is harder to tell that it is not sharp.

 

Staging in depth is also not the same as deep focus. Composing with a strong sense of a vanishing point is also not the same as deep focus. Deep focus is exactly what the term suggest, that the focus is deep, carries from near to far.