10 ms·

The Infinite Set: On '2001: A Space Odyssey'

64 points by prismatic 10y ago

GuiA 10y ago
What a great essay. Worth the read. "Upon reaching Jupiter, Bowman is guided into a wormhole, triggering Trumbull’s bravura psychedelic sequence. On either side of a perpendicular line dividing the screen, two vertical planes of brightly colored lights and shapes emerge, rushing past and out of frame, giving the illusion that Bowman (glimpsed in a juddering cutaway shot and then in paralytic stills) is racing through a corridor of infinite dimensions at speed-of-light intensity. Modeled in part after the avant-garde films of Jordan Belson (who later created special effects for The Right Stuff) and fraternal animators James and John Whitney (collaborators with Saul Bass on Vertigo’s title sequence), Trumbull recreated screen space with his slit-scan technique, combining long exposures of circuit board diagrams, Op Art prints, film negatives, and electron microscope photographs for this sequence, which cleverly exploited the simple x and y axis geometry of an ideally proportioned widescreen frame." That scene is probably my favorite movie scene of all times. My dad was a big fan of 2001, and made me watch the movie when I was 13 or so- I missed a lot of the subtleties, but that last part of the movie added a new layer to existence that I could have never conceived of before. For a nerdy teenager who was really into science and sci-fi, it was mind blowing to be exposed to such an artistic depiction of the subjectivity of the human perception of time and space, and the ambiguity of reality. It's interesting to read the techniques that went into making it - it's a very creative use of the medium. I can't help but feel that CGI has put special effects designer into a box of vertices and polygons, resulting in special effects that all look the same. I certainly can't think of a single movie that has something as unique and distinctive as the wormhole scene in 2001. I had high hopes for Interstellar, but it fell very flat (there are some groups doing very cool work in more traditional animation however - I really like Studio Laika, for instance).
- stronglikedan 10y ago
  This scene, no? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imbxqv_5TJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imbxqv_5TJU
- Nux 10y ago
  Cut up a fragment here http://tmp.nux.ro/J9d-beyondjupiterinfinite.webm http://tmp.nux.ro/J9d-beyondjupiterinfinite.webm
- cpeterso 10y ago
  Here is a beautiful mashup of the 2001 sequence and the Double Rainbow meme. It's both moving and amusing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozhR9fxe1oU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozhR9fxe1oU
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  They were probably the best optical effects ever made. Also interesting is the way they echo and expand on the imagery of the scenes inside HAL 9000. http://metaspatial.net/conferences/io/hal9000.jpg http://metaspatial.net/conferences/io/hal9000.jpg Kubrick was a genius photographer before he was a genius director. It's well worth hunting down the images he took in his pre-Hollywood career. E.g. https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/photographs-by-stanley-kubrick-look-magazine-life-in-new-york-40s-6.jpg?w=800&h=823 https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/photograph...
  - ghaff 10y ago
    A good case could also be made for the original Star Wars--albeit in a faster-paced and more action-oriented--as opposed to perfectly composed--way.
lostgame 10y ago
There is basically a point in cinema history before this film and after this film. So much of what Kubrick did here has never been replicated, few have even come close to the impact he created on the industry and the level of professionalism he created. However, that's not to say the end result is particularly enjoyable for me to watch. It's long runtime wears down on me and by the first hour I find myself wanting to watch many scenes at 1.5x speed just to feel like I'm watching a movie and not staring at slightly-moving still photography.
- js2 10y ago
  Curious, do you feel the same way about Barry Lyndon?
  - ghaff 10y ago
    I pretty much do. Barry Lyndon was also a cinematic tour de force for the time in its use of available light. But, like 2001, it's a long and rather cold film and one that I ultimately respect more than I love. (In the case of 2001, it is on my list of best films, but if I'm being honest that's more on the basis of its place in film history and scenes that are part of both film and broader cultural memory than because of a particular desire to watch the movie as a whole repeatedly.)
- Animats 10y ago
  Films have been speeding up for a century, in two ways. Editorial geography disappeared in the 1960s. Editorial geography example (not mine): Bogart gets phone call. Bogart gets up, walks out door. Bogart walks out door of building, gets into cab. Scene of Bogart in cab. Bogart gets out of cab, pays cabbie. Bogart walks into apartment building lobby. Pushes elevator button. Shot of elevator indicator coming down. Doors open. Bogart gets in. Shot of elevator indicator going up. Elevator doors open. Bogart gets out, walks down hall, rings doorbell. Lauren Bacall opens door. Bogart goes in. That's editorial geography. At one time, it was felt that audiences would get lost without such a sequence. Today, writers and directors would skip directly from the phone call to an interior shot of the apartment. Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" (1960) is said to have put an end to that. Related to this is average shot length as a metric.[1][2] "2001" has an average shot length of 13 seconds. At the other extreme are the Bourne movies, which are now down to around 1.1 seconds per shot. James Bond movies have sped up over the years, with "Dr. No" at 7 seconds and "Die Another Day (2002)" at 2.4 seconds. This is an industry-wide trend. Trailers are insane. Trailers routinely break the 1 second barrier today. So there's been a speedup in two dimensions - removal of unnecessary context, and shorter shots. To a modern viewer, 2001 looks quite slow-paced. With enough short shots, films can conceal the lack of a plot. (This is a problem with effects-heavy movies. After you leave the theater, you realize the plot made no sense. But it was a great effects demo reel.) [1] http://www.cinemetrics.lv/database.php http://www.cinemetrics.lv/database.php [2] http://unspokencinema.blogspot.com/2007/01/average-shot-length.html http://unspokencinema.blogspot.com/2007/01/average-shot-leng...
js2 10y ago
I think this has probably been submitted separatly to HN, but also worth reading is the Typeset In The Future entry on 2001: https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/01/31/2001-a-space-odyssey/ https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/01/31/2001-a-space-odyss...
erdevs 10y ago
As regards the wormhole sequence, one must appreciate the innovation in technique, meticulous execution, groundbreaking visuals, and also the incredible cinematic boldness in showing such a long, strange sequence in theaters at the time. Truly impressive and meaningful work, which left an indelible mark on cinema over the past 5 decades. That said, a part of me has always wished this sequence gave more thought to the physics and what it might be like to visualize the experience of traveling through a gate/wormhole like this. I don't think the coloration, visual patterns, or sequencing represents much understanding of the then-current physics theory on what this sort of thing might possibly be like, and I'm not sure it even captures it well in the abstract. Amazing cinematic work which moved the industry forward in a positive direction. I just always wished they'd somehow been able to go even further and applied the same brilliance of vision and execution in technique to an even more refined concept that incorporated some viable notions of the possible/theoretical physics involved in traversing through space-time like this.
- Sevrene 10y ago
  I always felt it was from David's perspective of what is unimaginable to any human, and the scene is just his feeble mind attempting to make sense of something that his body can't. Much in the same way he experiences himself grow old and be reborn; he's being shown something he can't comprehend in a way that makes it easier for him to experience and understand. It's not meant to really be literal. At least that's my take, I could be wrong!
  - turbohz 10y ago
    Yes. Metaphor. That's what it is.
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  > That said, a part of me has always wished this sequence gave more thought to the physics and what it might be like to visualize the experience of traveling through a gate/wormhole like this. I don't think the coloration, visual patterns, or sequencing represents much understanding of the then-current physics theory on what this sort of thing might possibly be like, and I'm not sure it even captures it well in the abstract. 'Interstellar' did some of that, and they had to hire Kip Thorne as a consultant, and run a render farm to raytrace the relativistic effects. I'm not sure the theory was quite at the same level in the '60s, and the cinema technique was definitely not the same. It would have been a lot harder to do any degree of realism.
chiph 10y ago
The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin has a 70mm print of 2001, and I was lucky enough to get a ticket to a viewing two summers ago. They even kept the intermission in place for a 151 minute film, a length today that would barely raise an eyebrow (LotR - The Two Towers is 179 minutes). It really is a mind-blowing film. He changed the design language for space from jump-suits and ray-guns to something cleaner and more logical. As well as spaceship design, clothing and the space suits. And reinforced IBM's design language as the way a computer should look (even the non-homicidal ones).

64 points by prismatic 10y ago

GuiA 10y ago

What a great essay. Worth the read. "Upon reaching Jupiter, Bowman is guided into a wormhole, triggering Trumbull’s bravura psychedelic sequence. On either side of a perpendicular line dividing the screen, two vertical planes of brightly colored lights and shapes emerge, rushing past and out of frame, giving the illusion that Bowman (glimpsed in a juddering cutaway shot and then in paralytic stills) is racing through a corridor of infinite dimensions at speed-of-light intensity. Modeled in part after the avant-garde films of Jordan Belson (who later created special effects for The Right Stuff) and fraternal animators James and John Whitney (collaborators with Saul Bass on Vertigo’s title sequence), Trumbull recreated screen space with his slit-scan technique, combining long exposures of circuit board diagrams, Op Art prints, film negatives, and electron microscope photographs for this sequence, which cleverly exploited the simple x and y axis geometry of an ideally proportioned widescreen frame." That scene is probably my favorite movie scene of all times. My dad was a big fan of 2001, and made me watch the movie when I was 13 or so- I missed a lot of the subtleties, but that last part of the movie added a new layer to existence that I could have never conceived of before. For a nerdy teenager who was really into science and sci-fi, it was mind blowing to be exposed to such an artistic depiction of the subjectivity of the human perception of time and space, and the ambiguity of reality. It's interesting to read the techniques that went into making it - it's a very creative use of the medium. I can't help but feel that CGI has put special effects designer into a box of vertices and polygons, resulting in special effects that all look the same. I certainly can't think of a single movie that has something as unique and distinctive as the wormhole scene in 2001. I had high hopes for Interstellar, but it fell very flat (there are some groups doing very cool work in more traditional animation however - I really like Studio Laika, for instance).

stronglikedan 10y ago
This scene, no? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imbxqv_5TJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imbxqv_5TJU
Nux 10y ago
Cut up a fragment here http://tmp.nux.ro/J9d-beyondjupiterinfinite.webm http://tmp.nux.ro/J9d-beyondjupiterinfinite.webm
cpeterso 10y ago
Here is a beautiful mashup of the 2001 sequence and the Double Rainbow meme. It's both moving and amusing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozhR9fxe1oU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozhR9fxe1oU
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
They were probably the best optical effects ever made. Also interesting is the way they echo and expand on the imagery of the scenes inside HAL 9000. http://metaspatial.net/conferences/io/hal9000.jpg http://metaspatial.net/conferences/io/hal9000.jpg Kubrick was a genius photographer before he was a genius director. It's well worth hunting down the images he took in his pre-Hollywood career. E.g. https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/photographs-by-stanley-kubrick-look-magazine-life-in-new-york-40s-6.jpg?w=800&h=823 https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/photograph...
- ghaff 10y ago
  A good case could also be made for the original Star Wars--albeit in a faster-paced and more action-oriented--as opposed to perfectly composed--way.

lostgame 10y ago

There is basically a point in cinema history before this film and after this film. So much of what Kubrick did here has never been replicated, few have even come close to the impact he created on the industry and the level of professionalism he created. However, that's not to say the end result is particularly enjoyable for me to watch. It's long runtime wears down on me and by the first hour I find myself wanting to watch many scenes at 1.5x speed just to feel like I'm watching a movie and not staring at slightly-moving still photography.

js2 10y ago
Curious, do you feel the same way about Barry Lyndon?
- ghaff 10y ago
  I pretty much do. Barry Lyndon was also a cinematic tour de force for the time in its use of available light. But, like 2001, it's a long and rather cold film and one that I ultimately respect more than I love. (In the case of 2001, it is on my list of best films, but if I'm being honest that's more on the basis of its place in film history and scenes that are part of both film and broader cultural memory than because of a particular desire to watch the movie as a whole repeatedly.)
Animats 10y ago
Films have been speeding up for a century, in two ways. Editorial geography disappeared in the 1960s. Editorial geography example (not mine): Bogart gets phone call. Bogart gets up, walks out door. Bogart walks out door of building, gets into cab. Scene of Bogart in cab. Bogart gets out of cab, pays cabbie. Bogart walks into apartment building lobby. Pushes elevator button. Shot of elevator indicator coming down. Doors open. Bogart gets in. Shot of elevator indicator going up. Elevator doors open. Bogart gets out, walks down hall, rings doorbell. Lauren Bacall opens door. Bogart goes in. That's editorial geography. At one time, it was felt that audiences would get lost without such a sequence. Today, writers and directors would skip directly from the phone call to an interior shot of the apartment. Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" (1960) is said to have put an end to that. Related to this is average shot length as a metric.[1][2] "2001" has an average shot length of 13 seconds. At the other extreme are the Bourne movies, which are now down to around 1.1 seconds per shot. James Bond movies have sped up over the years, with "Dr. No" at 7 seconds and "Die Another Day (2002)" at 2.4 seconds. This is an industry-wide trend. Trailers are insane. Trailers routinely break the 1 second barrier today. So there's been a speedup in two dimensions - removal of unnecessary context, and shorter shots. To a modern viewer, 2001 looks quite slow-paced. With enough short shots, films can conceal the lack of a plot. (This is a problem with effects-heavy movies. After you leave the theater, you realize the plot made no sense. But it was a great effects demo reel.) [1] http://www.cinemetrics.lv/database.php http://www.cinemetrics.lv/database.php [2] http://unspokencinema.blogspot.com/2007/01/average-shot-length.html http://unspokencinema.blogspot.com/2007/01/average-shot-leng...

js2 10y ago

I think this has probably been submitted separatly to HN, but also worth reading is the Typeset In The Future entry on 2001: https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/01/31/2001-a-space-odyssey/ https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/01/31/2001-a-space-odyss...

erdevs 10y ago

As regards the wormhole sequence, one must appreciate the innovation in technique, meticulous execution, groundbreaking visuals, and also the incredible cinematic boldness in showing such a long, strange sequence in theaters at the time. Truly impressive and meaningful work, which left an indelible mark on cinema over the past 5 decades. That said, a part of me has always wished this sequence gave more thought to the physics and what it might be like to visualize the experience of traveling through a gate/wormhole like this. I don't think the coloration, visual patterns, or sequencing represents much understanding of the then-current physics theory on what this sort of thing might possibly be like, and I'm not sure it even captures it well in the abstract. Amazing cinematic work which moved the industry forward in a positive direction. I just always wished they'd somehow been able to go even further and applied the same brilliance of vision and execution in technique to an even more refined concept that incorporated some viable notions of the possible/theoretical physics involved in traversing through space-time like this.

Sevrene 10y ago
I always felt it was from David's perspective of what is unimaginable to any human, and the scene is just his feeble mind attempting to make sense of something that his body can't. Much in the same way he experiences himself grow old and be reborn; he's being shown something he can't comprehend in a way that makes it easier for him to experience and understand. It's not meant to really be literal. At least that's my take, I could be wrong!
- turbohz 10y ago
  Yes. Metaphor. That's what it is.
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
> That said, a part of me has always wished this sequence gave more thought to the physics and what it might be like to visualize the experience of traveling through a gate/wormhole like this. I don't think the coloration, visual patterns, or sequencing represents much understanding of the then-current physics theory on what this sort of thing might possibly be like, and I'm not sure it even captures it well in the abstract. 'Interstellar' did some of that, and they had to hire Kip Thorne as a consultant, and run a render farm to raytrace the relativistic effects. I'm not sure the theory was quite at the same level in the '60s, and the cinema technique was definitely not the same. It would have been a lot harder to do any degree of realism.

chiph 10y ago

The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin has a 70mm print of 2001, and I was lucky enough to get a ticket to a viewing two summers ago. They even kept the intermission in place for a 151 minute film, a length today that would barely raise an eyebrow (LotR - The Two Towers is 179 minutes). It really is a mind-blowing film. He changed the design language for space from jump-suits and ray-guns to something cleaner and more logical. As well as spaceship design, clothing and the space suits. And reinforced IBM's design language as the way a computer should look (even the non-homicidal ones).