In the “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” section, what technique was used when Dave travels through the weird colored “hyperspace?” The kinda two-dimensional video game looking stuff.
I’m told that a lot of it involved using magnets to alter the colors of the film. I’d love to know more about it myself.
According to the TCM website:
“To create the spectacular space ride at the film’s climax, Trumbull combined aerial footage of Monument Valley, Utah (a favorite location for John Ford’s westerns), shot through colored filters, with other aerial shots originally made for Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. He also invented a split-scan effect by keeping the camera’s shutter open to expose a single frame of film while he moved the light source toward the camera to create fantastic light patterns.”
For more, behind-the-scenes info on the special effects in this film, see
[URL=http://www.turnerclassicmovies.com/ThisMonth/Article/0,26706|26708|26711,00.html]
I also read this somewhere else. I haven’t been able to find the cite for where I saw it though.
You can also read about the 2001 effects in The Making of Kubrick’s 2001 by Jerome Agel. Assuming you can find a copy these days.
Thanks a lot, guys. I caught the movie on television last night (thank God for TCM!) and I was curious. Thanks again.
I caught some of it as well…
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I was noticing when the ape men are touching the monolith, you can see both a cresent moon and the sun, both very close to each other. Is this possible? I thought the cresent moon was caused by the Earth’s shadow on the moon. I can’t see how both moon and sun could be visible at the same time in such a small field of view.
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The Earth’s shadow on the moon causes a lunar eclipse. The monthly moon phases are caused by the fact that the dark bit is facing away from the sun, and is therefore in shadow. A moon anywhere near the sun from a viewer’s perspective would be a crescent (or new).
The dark area of the crescent moon is just like the night side of earth - nothing external is blocking the sun’s light.
You’re right about the problem of seeing the crescent moon like that. That size of a crescent would be much farther away from the sun. I’ve seen a crescent moon that was just 24 hours away from new, and it was smaller than that, not really a crescent. I think the closest-to-new moon that’s ever been observed is 18 hours. Moons less than 20 hours away from new are very hard to see.
The alignment of celestial bodies is a theme in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It happens again when Bowman is hovering over Jupiter; in both cases, it signals an epochal event.
It is a long time since I last saw the movie, but I am sure I remember thinking that some of the special effects shots looked like the flow country in the North of Scotland - a large area of pools and tiny islands. Can anyone shed any further light on that?
It was actually footage of northern Canada, shot for Dr. Strangelove.