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

[Carl Looper]

Of course a 'camera aperture was imposed', as you put it. The effects shots were made with a camera.

There was no 'racking' or garbage matting, no multiple passes.

2001 was composited by contact printing- multiple exposure and rotoscoped hand-drawn mattes. There was no optical printing at all.

 

First of all a garbage matte is an entirely different thing from the "garbage imagery" I was speaking about. Second of all there is no difference between "multiple passes" and "multiple exposure". They mean exactly the same thing. But if you do know how the various shots in 2001 were actually made then you certainly know more than do I. For I am doing no more than speculating on how certain shots might have done and what might possibly account for what I saw..

 

C

[Carl Looper]

Carl, do you think you might have been seeing part of two frames momentarily and spaceship you saw at the top of the frame wasn't simply at the bottom of the previous frame?

 

 

The recollection I have (which could very well be an hallucination for all I know) was the distinct impression of a spaceship sitting stationary at the top edge of the frame (or bottom of an adjacent frame of course) and while I can't exactly recall the remainder of the composition I'm pretty sure it was moving. An image of the Earth springs to mind. And then at a certain point the spaceship suddenly moves in sync with the remainder of the moving composition - entering the frame from the top. It struck me as completely odd.

 

But of course the intervening years might have distorted this impression. Or, god forbid, actually invented the impression in the first place. I never really gave it much thought. I just assumed it was an artifact of some compositing technique that was not meant to be visible, and left it at that.

 

But if I've somehow invented the impression that's another possibility to add to the mix.

 

C

[Mark Dunn]

Carl, I'm not trying to get one over, I'm trying to explain.

They may mean the same to you but you also refer to 'intermediates' of which there were none, unless you are going to say that multiple exposure is the same thing. These terminologies are quire precise and it's difficult to explain things to you if you say that something means what you say it means rather than what it means to the rest of us.

Of course David is right, the star gate imagery was optically printed but you were referring to spaceships and they weren't.

There aren't any stray bits of spaceship hiding out of frame. In Star Wars, maybe,, but not in 2001.

As to knowing how the shots were made, there's a lot in the various publications and documentaries over the years. I'm not speculating. Memory plays tricks.

[John E Clark]

 

Memory plays tricks.

 

I'd probably believe someone who has seen the film recently, but definitely for memories reaching back to the time of 'when it was showing in theaters'... given the type of substances my peers would ingest before going to a showing... I'd say, don't believe anything that was 'remembered'...

 

I watch it about every 10 years or so, with each 'update' on home viewing technology... and perhaps I should watch it again soon... is there a 'critical' new transfer coming out any time soon?

 

But for my own edification, probably "Paths of Glory"(1957) is more to 'what I could actually do', and find useful in pratical applications. "Lolita"(1962) as well, since they deal with 'real' locaitons, etc. rather than either highly stylized as in the case of "A Clockwork Orange"(1971) or huge sets of "2001: A Space Odyssey"(1968).

 

Having read the original Schnitzler "Traumnovelle"... I thought "Eyes Wide Shut"(1999) was a botch (even if Kubrick lived to give it his final cut...). It should have been a period piece, and I don't know that Cruise and Kidman would be up for 'period' type acting. The 'mores' that Schnitlzer was depicting, and even then in his time the work was sort of 'passe', definitely did not make much sense to the 'modern' viewer... in my opinion...

Edited October 24, 2014 by John E Clark

[Carl Looper]

One of the interesting differences between the composite work in 2001 and that of Star Wars is that many of the composited spacecraft are two dimensional - "cardboard cutouts" one might say. But scaled in such a way as to create the impression of moving in perspective. This allows the required matte to be a lot simpler. One can use a single matte (hand drawn or otherwise), the shape of the spacecraft, which is made to travel by racking a projection, ie. in such a way that mimics motion in perspective. The prespective effect might be called "Two and a half D" as digital compositers might want to call it. There is a certain "stately" beauty in such a technique.

 

And this might be called optical printing, if on a custom "in the large" setup. Certainly not contact printing. Better terminology might be optical compositing. Or optical effects. The important point is that it is certainly optical. Of course contact printing might be done in the final compositing stage (marrying various elements) but there is plenty of optical work being done prior to that. I mean even exposing film in a camera could be called "optical printing" if one wanted to use that term in the broadest possible sense. But whichever way one wants to call it, optical work is certainly being done, and this certainly allows for the possibility that not everything be contained within the confines of something as ordinary and mundane as a mere camera aperture.

 

But look. I could very well have hallucinated the entire thing. Or acquired some false memory. That's not being rhetorical. I'm literally questioning my own recollection.

 

C

[Carl Looper]

Carl, I'm not trying to get one over, I'm trying to explain.

They may mean the same to you but you also refer to 'intermediates' of which there were none, unless you are going to say that multiple exposure is the same thing. These terminologies are quire precise and it's difficult to explain things to you if you say that something means what you say it means rather than what it means to the rest of us.

Of course David is right, the star gate imagery was optically printed but you were referring to spaceships and they weren't.

There aren't any stray bits of spaceship hiding out of frame. In Star Wars, maybe,, but not in 2001.

As to knowing how the shots were made, there's a lot in the various publications and documentaries over the years. I'm not speculating. Memory plays tricks.

 

By intermediate I mean that in a loose sense as anything committed to neg before being re-employed in a subsequent exposure of another neg. Indeed what is a matte if not an intermediate of some description. When it comes to special effects, factory terminology might be inappropriate, but it's certainly better than nothing at all. Special effects are by definition special and don't lend themselves to factory terminology.

 

Indeed calling the slitscan technique "optical printing" is equally using that terminology in a loose sense. As I do as well.

 

And what would multiple passes mean anyway if not mutiple exposures? Regardless of any proof one might suppose, that I'm talking out of my arse.

 

C

[Carl Looper]

Re-reading my post on intermediates and mutiple passes I can see where I've been somewhat looser than I should have been.

 

As it reads, it's as if I were suggesting that having created an intermediate I was suggesting re-exposure of that same intermediate! I wasn't, (as should be obvious from the context) but it certainly reads that way. By another "pass or two" I meant, of course, another generation (ie. new neg).

 

Elsewhere by "pass" I do mean mutliple exposure of the same neg.

 

So anyway I can see now where the confusion has come about.

 

Carl

[Carl Looper]

I can't say I have witnessed any stray bits of spaceship hiding out of frame in Star Wars. And obvioulsy Mark hasn't either. Otherwise it wouldn't be a "maybe" assigned to such. But for some reason we're to accept that such stray bits of spaceship might be in Star Wars but definitely not in 2001.

 

If I'm being somewhat speculative in what I'm suggesting I don't know how stray bits of spaceship in Star Wars could be any less so. Indeed it is precisely more so. Since it has no basis in any observable whatseover.

 

My speculation is centred on an observable. Observables have a reality in their own right, although we do not necessarily know how to explain such. And so one might speculate. Theorise. Test out assumptions to see if they hold. See if there is any show stopper, such as a 65mm camera gate that might rule such out. And of course if we had access to a print of 2001 we could do even better. But non-observables just have no reality whatsoever.

 

Even if turns out there actually are stray bits of spaceship to be found in Star Wars.

 

I'd argue anyway.

 

C

[Gregg MacPherson]

....My speculation is centred on an observable. Observables have a reality in their own right....

 

I'd argue anyway.

 

 

Each of us may assume that what we observe is real. But will every one else (assume that what we saw was real)? No. Unless the observation is common or repeatable. Nice try (smiley smirk face).

 

We can argue later whether the experience of abstract objects can be more or less real than the experience of physical objects later (purring cat face)

Edited October 24, 2014 by Gregg MacPherson

[Carl Looper]

 

Each of us may assume that what we observe is real. But will every one else (assume that what we saw was real)? No. Unless the observation is common or repeatable. Nice try (smiley smirk face).

 

We can argue later whether the experience of abstract objects can be more or less real than the experience of physical objects later (purring cat face)

 

 

Observations are real. Or if we don't like that word "real" we can say observations are not illusions.

 

This is, of course, merely a proposition.

 

As to whether anyone, or everyone, can agree with this proposition doesn't really challenge the proposition in any way. Who cares if someone doesn't agree. I certainly don't. But I am very much interested in why someone might disagree. Far more interesting than the simple fact of it. Why it is that observables are considered not real whereas complete assumption, disengaged from any obervation, should have any better psotion?

 

Definitely. I'd read any argument against the proposition. Indeed I spend a lot of time doing just such a thing. So by all means elaborate.

 

I was going to say "nice try" but it actually wasn't.

 

C

[Carl Looper]

I'll elaborate the proposition a little more.

 

An observable is a reality in itself - quite apart from what we might theorise as the cause of such a reality. Even if the observable turns out to be explainable in terms of a psychotic episode, too much cocaine, the result of time travel, a de-a-vu hiccup in one's neurons, or indeed the arrangement of dyes in a print of 2001.

 

The observable has a reality in it's own right. A complication might be in what is meant by the term reality as used here. The phrase "reality in it's own right" is to help distinguish it from any other reality one might assign to the word "reality".

 

It is not so much reality as we might use that word when saying "in reality" eg. in reality it was was the refraction of light caused by the heat of the desert, rather than water.

 

Rather the reality being proposed is nether water nor a refraction of light. It refers to that shimmer on the horizon - whatever it might be "in reality". It refers to the image itself. Or the mirage if you like. The apparition.

 

Hope that clarifies the use of the word.

 

C

.

[David Mullen ASC]

Considering how thin the separation is between frames in a 70mm and 35mm scope print, it's possible that you saw a projector that was misframed and thus showing you part of the frame above or below. In a space scene with a lot of black background, it could easily look like the same frame because the frame line would be hard to see. It's possible, if the whole opening looked OK, that when they got to the space scenes, there was a splice fixing a break in the print that caused the frame line to be shifted.

[Mark Dunn]

 

Even if turns out there actually are stray bits of spaceship to be found in Star Wars.

 

There's a famous shot with a couple of frames of rocket exhaust unattached to any spacecraft. Someone tracked it down on the video transfer. That's what I was referring to. You don't notice it in a normal screening.

[Carl Looper]

There's a famous shot with a couple of frames of rocket exhaust unattached to any spacecraft. Someone tracked it down on the video transfer. That's what I was referring to. You don't notice it in a normal screening.

 

Cheers Mark. So it wasn't just a proposition.

[Carl Looper]

Considering how thin the separation is between frames in a 70mm and 35mm scope print, it's possible that you saw a projector that was misframed and thus showing you part of the frame above or below. In a space scene with a lot of black background, it could easily look like the same frame because the frame line would be hard to see. It's possible, if the whole opening looked OK, that when they got to the space scenes, there was a splice fixing a break in the print that caused the frame line to be shifted.

 

I'm not sure what to think anymore. Have been looking through a video to see if I can find any shot that correlates with my recollection. But I have to say I'm not sure which shot would fit. I was convinced it was a shot of that ship with a circular disk/fan protruding - but finding a shot of such it doesn't quite fit my recollection. The ship is too far to the right (from what I recall). And there's too much going on before the ship enters frame. The impression I have was that it occured at the head of a shot. And lasted for at least a second, ie. not just a flash frame (as a splice might appear).

 

I had a play around in Photoshop with a few frames from a candidate shot and an overlay of the camera aperture lines, and the amount of ship possible within the dead area, but the result still didn't match anything my memory was suggesting. However I did discover there's certainly enough space between the frames to accomodate what my memory is suggesting. No problem there.

 

But I have to say, in the absence of anything resembling what I saw, I'm somewhat more convinced I was, as one says, "seeing things".

 

Carl

[Carl Looper]

I've solved it.

 

It's the very first space shot. Following the bone.

 

Both the image of the ship, and it's x position within the frame, dovetails precisely with my recollection. Indeed uncannily so. And assuming that's the case, for indeed no other shot fits, then we can assume the projected image was higher on the screen than it should have been, ie. placing the ship at the top of the screen. And as David Mullen sproposed there is plenty of black, top and bottom to mask any frame line.

 

But furthermore, in order to reconstruct what my memory is telling me, the projectionist would have had to be racking the image in the opposite direction to which he or she should have been, ie. if the ship was to remain stationary on the top of the screen (as my memory tells me). We can conclude the projectionist was attempting to correct the projection but doing so in the wrong direction. Cancelling out the motion of the spacecraft. And at the moment they realse their error, they reverse the direction of the correction, creating the distinct impression of a spaceship suddenly moving in a downward direction.

 

And just as the projectionist completes their correction the Earth enters in from the right to complete the effect.

 

Carl

[David Mullen ASC]

There isn't much room to put a spaceship in the margins between the 65mm camera negative aperture and the 70mm projection aperture. I did a rough drawing to show the outer and inner areas:

 

But even if you could squeeze an unwanted object into that tiny border, this is a visual effects shot, not some live action shot where the operator could accidentally get a flag into the frame or the mic boom. Why would an effects person take the time to composite a space ship model into the border of the negative and then just have it sit there waiting for it to enter the rest of the frame? He would just have it enter the frame cleanly, he wouldn't spend all this time and money to stick into the edge of the frame waiting for it to be seen in a later.

 

It makes no sense to deliberately create an effects shot that would be ruined by the slightest projectionist misframing.

 

It's far more likely that if you saw the projection rack the frame up or down, that before you were seeing a piece of the frame above and below, and the black frame line was not visible in a scene against black space.

 

These sorts of things come down to the difference between what's possible and what's probable. What you are describing is not impossible, just highly improbable.

 

I will also add that I've seen "2001" projected in 70mm about a dozen times and nothing like what you have described ever occurred in my screenings in various theaters.

[Carl Looper]

Hi David,

 

I'm assuming you missed my last post or are otherwise completely misreading it. I'm talking about projection in the cinema - not a projection during creation of the shot.

 

As for the probability of explaining what I saw in terms of a production setup I'm already quite aware how odd that explanation is. I've never been happy with it myself. But in the absence of any better explanation it's been the one that's persisted.

 

But the solution I posted in my previous post is an altogether different explanation that is consistent with both your propositions and resistances and with my recollections. And what's more, doesn't require some **(obscenity removed)**up in the special effects department.

 

Rather the latest explanation - so much better than the one that struck me at the time, treats the effect as the result of an error on behalf of a cinema projectionist who had fortuitiously (if that is the right word) happened to precisely cancel out the motion of the spacecraft, before they otherwise corrected it in the way they should have in the first place, and which, as a consequence, produced the effect of the spacecraft suddenly moving from stationary pose.

 

Carl

[Carl Looper]

Hi David,

 

I might just add that I was in no way suggesting, (prior to positing the alternative explanation) that what I saw could occupy the remarkably thin difference between the 65mm camera frame and the 70mm projector frame. The explanation I had been entertaining and elaborating was (as odd as it may have been) that the spacecraft was occupying the rather larger gap between the frames.

 

Not because I had in any way become enamoured of such an explanation. Far from it. It disturbed all my sense of economy. As you say it is improbable for the reasons you've posted. But it was either that or that I was "seeing things". The former explanation appealed for obvious reasons. Even it did require entertaining the idea that perhaps 2001 wasn't as well presupposed as it might have otherwise been.

 

But to object to such an explanation on the basis of the camera aperture, while interesting, didn't actually solve anything for me. It didn't in any way explain what I saw. And was merely an objection to something I hadn't even entertained in the first place. If I was to entertain the idea of an out of frame spacecraft it wasn't going to be one that could occupy that remarkably thin boundary between camera and projector. Would it? It would have to be one that supposed a possible scenario (if improbable scenario), rather than an impossible one.

 

Some have called 2001 an experimental film, and to the extent that it does offer us innovations and ways of seeing not previously screened in a mainstream context, one could be forgiven for assuming that the techniques employed may have been done in an experimental way, ie. not necessarily perfectly conceived in terms of pre-planning but found through physical experimentation - even if on a good hunch - ie. done on the job so to speak. While this might jar with the mythology (if not truth) of the perfectionist Kubrick, I'm not so enamoured of Kubrick as to automatically conclude I must have otherwise been "seeing things".

 

Certainly in the work of experimental filmmakers I've come across, a camera aperture would not get in the way of a possibly useful effect. Indeed a lot of work I've witnessed can take place without any camera (in the conventional sense) being used at all. And if the experimental filmmakers I know have no problem with such I certainly wouldn't imagine Kubrick letting something as simple as a ready made camera impede what might be possible. Or Trumball, properly speaking. And burning a second of 65mm film on material that may or may not be used in an effect certainly didn't cause me to lose any sleep.

 

That all being said, none of the possible scenarios actually worked in the end. After finding the correct spacecraft in the correct position, I could see the shot didn't involve the spacecraft entering frame from the top anyway. It starts off in the middle of the frame. In other words the shot itself ruled out what I'd been entertaining.

 

And on the basis of the shot I was able to reconstruct another possible, and far less improbable, explanation.

 

C

[David Mullen ASC]

There is no gap between the frames. If a projector pulls down 5-perfs of 70mm print at a time, it pulls down another 5-perfs the next time, there isn't a 6th perf acting as a 1-perf buffer area between each 5-perf frame or something like that.

[Carl Looper]

Ok. Thanks David. So that first diagram you posted was a bit misleading. No problem.

 

C

[Carl Looper]

The lively discussion on effects in 2001 has inspired some investigation, in more detail, into how the effects were done. I imagine there will be a certain amount of information lost but equally quite a lot to be found. I recollect reading The Making of 2001 in the 1970s and spent this morning going through some second hand book shops on the lookout for a copy.

 

There are, however, versions available through amazon etc. Not sure why I didn't look there first. Perhaps it was simply the desire to get amongst some old books no matter what they were.

 

In any case I found some snippets from the book online, and in particular is the following - a somewhat messy montage of various source documents and overlaid commentary. It is in relation to the shot in which the Pod is grabbing Poole. Interestingly the matte for Poole is hand drawn, as distinct from using some sort of chroma-key. In such a scene the matte might only need to block the stars from overlaying Poole, given elsewhere would be black and have no affect. IAnd in theory such a matte could be quite easily hand drawn insofar as it would only really need to address where a star threatened to overlay the body, elsewhere could be more of a garbage matte than one faithfully following the outline of the body. However looking at the edges of some of the shots on video - there's a subtle but distinct wobble to the matte, along the entire edge of the body - indicating a very tight fitting matte. And this could very well be to allow for (or cope with) a certain level of flare in the background, if not flare in individual stars. Or Poole wasn't shot on a black background. And if I'm reading the text on the card correctly they are refering to the animated matte as a "blob". Will need to put that into my dictionary of technical terms.

 

Another interesting point about this is that if Kubrick really were the mastermind behind the faking of the lunar landing (ha ha) he did a much better job on that, than in 2001. For technically the stars would be too faint to register in any photography that was actually done in space (if Poole wasn't to be over-exposed) . Funnily enough the conspiracy theory reads it the other way - as if there should be stars visible in the Lunar Landing footage, and the absence of such proves it was fake (ha ha).

 

 

 

 

[Mark Dunn]

Ok. Thanks David. So that first diagram you posted was a bit misleading. No problem.

 

C

Not to me it isn't.

[Phil Connolly]

Presumably that couldn't have been the one I saw on 1/1/2001 then.

It could have been - maybe it screened in London first, we were told at the screening the new(ish) print had come directly from a screening in Germany and had the english audio re-dubbed over the Mag. I'm not sure why they didn't use DTS for the audio as it would have made it easier to use the print in different territories. It did sound good in Dolby SR though.

 

After the Bradford film festival the print was screened in London later in the year as part of the wider 2001 re-release.

[Mark Dunn]

This was on the first of January though, before it could have been screened in Germany. So unless it was re-dubbed twice....

Anyway, those were the days. The new re-release is digital. Not interested.

Edited October 27, 2014 by Mark Dunn