Notes by Frederick Ordway, Scientific/Technical Consultant on '2001'

[AdamSmith]

So I consider 2001: A Space Odyssey enough of an artwork to put this in this forum. This is a reminiscence I just came across by Frederick I. Ordway III of his work with Kubrick and Clarke as scientific and technical consultant during the making of 2001. Riveting the quantity of detailed technical collaboration they had with major scientific, industrial and engineering companies to make the film as technically credible as possible. Widely reported, but I had somehow missed Ordway's own account until now:

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0075.html

[RA1]

Fascinating. I did not at first realize what this was. I have seen a documentary about the back story on Discovery or History but this is equally interesting.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

More on this topic:

Scientific Expertise in Hollywood: The Interactions between Scientific and Entertainment Cultures

[AdamSmith]

'Cavradyne' -- fascinating! Had completely forgotten this detail.

Discovery One

In the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Discovery One is described as being about 460 feet (140 m) long (the 2010 movie mentions 250 feet) and powered by "Cavradyne" gaseous core nuclear reactor engines.

Cavradyne Engines

According to the book, the ship's propulsion controls would be designed with the assistance of General Electric's Valley Forge Space Technology Center and the UK Atomic Energy Authority. These controls were located in the command module. A Honeywell nuclear reactor control panel displayed information on such parameters as turbine, compressor, heat exchanger, secondary circulatory, and radiator liquid helium storage, generator and recuperator performance, and pressures and temperatures at various stations. Precise readings could be obtained instantaneously on the control screen, if desired, as well as past performance and predicted future performance.

The fictional Cavradyne engines were based on research into gaseous core nuclear reactors and high-temperature ionized gases. The theory was presumed to have shown that gaseous uranium-235 could be made critical in a cavity reactor only several feet or meters in diameter if the uranium atomic density were kept high, and if temperatures were maintained at a minimum of 20,000 °F (11,400 K). At first, progress was slow because of such early unsolved problems as how to reduce vortex turbulence in order to achieve high separation ratios, and how to achieve adequate wall cooling in the face of the thermal radiation from the high-temperature plasma. In the Cavradyne system, the temperature of the reactor was not directly limited by the capabilities of solid materials, since the central cavity was surrounded by a thick graphite wall that moderates the neutrons, reflecting most of them back into the cavity. Wall cooling would be ensured by circulating the hydrogen propellant prior to its being heated. Fissionable fuel energy was said to be transferred to the propellant by radiation through a specially designed rigid—and coolable—container, similar to the way in which fission energy was transferred to hydrogen propellant in the NERVA design.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_One

Gas core reactor rocket

Gas core reactor rockets are a conceptual type of rocket that is propelled by the exhausted coolant of a gaseous fission reactor. The nuclear fission reactor core may be either a gas or plasma. They may be capable of creating specific impulses of 3,000–5,000 s (30 to 50 kN·s/kg, effective exhaust velocities 30 to 50 km/s) and thrust which is enough for relatively fast interplanetary travel. Heat transfer to the working fluid (propellant) is by thermal radiation, mostly in the ultraviolet, given off by the fission gas at a working temperature of around 25,000 °C.

Theory of operation

Nuclear gas-core-reactor rockets can provide much higher specific impulse than solid core nuclear rockets because their temperature limitations are in the nozzle and core wall structural temperatures, which are distanced from the hottest regions of the gas core. Consequently, nuclear gas core reactors can provide much higher temperatures to the propellant. Solid core nuclear thermal rockets can develop higher specific impulse than conventional chemical rockets due to the extreme power density of the reactor core, but their operating temperatures are limited by the maximum temperature of the solid core because the reactor's temperatures cannot rise above its components' lowest melting temperature.

Due to the much higher temperatures achievable by the gaseous core design, it can deliver higher specific impulse and thrust than most other conventional nuclear designs. This translates into shorter mission transit times for future astronauts or larger payload fractions. It may also be possible to use partially ionized plasma from the gas core to generate electricity magnetohydrodynamically, subsequently negating the need for an additional power supply.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_core_reactor_rocket

[AdamSmith]

Starship Modeler: The Hardware of
"2001: A Space Odyssey"

By Rob Caswell, with the generous help of Phil Sterett.
Additional thanks to Scott Alexander (aka "Captain Cardboard"), Scott Lowther (Part Time Models) , Pat Sklenar, and Denis Troussard.

Kubrick's vision for the year 2001 holds up reasonably well, considering its 1960's perspective. This is due, in no small part, to the dedication and passion that hardware designers Fred Ordway and Harry Lange brought to the film. These craft remain some of the most plausible created for sci-fi cinema. The craftsmanship of the models was also ground breaking. They were some of the first movie models to use small parts from plastic kits to detail and texture - a practice that's since become a standard.

The study of 2001's studio models is just that: a study. Kubrick had a penchant for destroying his props after production. His goal was to make sure that things like spacecraft were not later reused in low budget sci-fi flicks, thus cheapening his original work. He even destroyed the plans used to create the vehicles and sets. While an artistically admirable goal, it left us with the barest scattering of 2001 movie artifacts.

In the absence of real models, careful research is required in order to piece together the details of these landmark movie spacecraft. The most obvious and readily available source for reference is the film, itself. However there are some other images out there - out takes, promo shots, etc.

Our goal with this page is to try to assemble as many of those resources as possible. We've gone back to periodicals released in the 60's, pictures from original program books, and more. We also share our information and observations on the various craft in the sections below.

Probably the best printed source of 2001 reference is the book Filming the Future, by Piers Bizony. We have avoided including pictures that are redundant to that volume, unless we had a significantly superior reproduction of an image.

Do you have any other unique 2001 photos or information? If so and you're willing to have them posted here, please contact Rob. Our goal is to make this the Web's most complete 2001 resource for sci-fi modelers. To do that we could use your help.

Satellites | Orion III | Space Station 5 | Aries IB | Moonbus | Discovery | Pods | Spacesuits
Starship Modeler 2001 Modeling Page | Starship Modeler Home

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/2001/2001ref.htm

[AdamSmith]

Wendy Carlos reports:

...The sentient computer in Arthur C. Clarke's story is called HAL (and no, Clarke did not plan the name to be the three letters of IBM shifted one place to the left -- that myth overlooks an even lovelier example of serendipitous coincidence!). In the film the role was voiced by Canadian actor, Douglas Rain, who was able to give a cool, detached -- yet feelingful duality to the character. Here's a publicity photo of Rain taken from around that time.

During the scene in which Dave (Keir Dullea) "lobotomizes" HAL, you'll easily hear how the tempo of Rain's voice becomes slowly expanded and pitch-shifted gradually downwards. Actually, his entire performance as HAL has a mild amount of time stretching (no alteration of pitch) going on, as Stanley confided to me. I told him I hadn't noticed it before, and he smiled: "it was about 10-20%, rather subtle." But that was enough to enhance Rain's performance with a slightly more measured quality. It's in the final HAL scene that the Eltro effect is cranked way up. "We did that in two passes", Kubrick quietly explained. One pass gradually dropped HALs pitch down to almost zero, remaining at a constant speed. The other pass gradually stretched it out in time, but not as extreme, as HAL sang "Daisy, Daisy" (Bicycle Built For Two by Harry Dacre). And indeed, you couldn't do this simply by slowing down a regular tape recording, as many pundits have since wrongly guessed (to reach the final low pitch, the tempo would crawl to a near-stop).

http://www.wendycarlos.com/other/Eltro-1967/

[MsGuy]

AS, bless your heart, you are seriously obsessed with 2001.

[AdamSmith]

AS, bless your heart, you are seriously obsessed with 2001.

[MsGuy]

Would it be too obvious to point out that your post was clearly intended to deflect attention from your obsession?

[AdamSmith]

My post was meant to EMBRACE my obsession.

If there ever was an obsession I was even more open about than Andre...

[MsGuy]

Spoken like a real trooper.

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

And right before the apotheosis of his mythic story, Kubrick throws in a bathroom joke!

[AdamSmith]

Continuing on with my 2nd-greatest obsession of all time...

The recipient of the Vision Award at this year's 2013 Locarno Film Festival, Academy Award winning special effects pioneer and writer/director Douglas Trumbull talks with TV STORE ONLINE about creating the inventive special effects for Stanley Kubrick's landmark work of movie science fiction, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.

TV STORE ONLINE: Mr. Trumbull how did you come to work with Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)?

Trumbull inventing on
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF
THE THIRD KIND (1977)

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke had seen a film I worked on for a company called Graphic Films, TO THE MOON AND BEYOND (1964) at the 1964 New York's World Fair. At the time Graphic Films was producing a lot of training and simulation films for NASA and the USAF about outer space. These were very technical films, but they were also animated and semi-photo realistic.

TV STORE ONLINE: It seems like the 1964 World's Fair had a big influence of Kubrick and Clarke and how they'd realize the film. Do you think that the appearance of the video phone at the fair that year had an impact on how we see it used in 2001?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: Yes. I think Kubrick and Clarke must have seen the video phone at the World's Fair that same year as well as my film.

TV STORE ONLINE: Since TO THE MOON AND BEYOND hasn't been seen since then really, could you tell me what it consisted of?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: TO THE MOON AND BEYOND was only fifteen minutes in length. It went on to explain the big bang theory and ended with the micro-cosmos. It was also shot in Cinerama and projected on this planetarium type screen in big theaters.

TV STORE ONLINE: What type of work did you do on TO THE MOON AND BEYOND?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: I did all the artwork for the film. I did all the illustrations, all the stars, and all the planets in the film. So when it played at the World's Fair that year Stanley Kubrick saw it, and approached Graphic Films to see if he could hire them to help work on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968).

TV STORE ONLINE: Then there was another film that Kubrick saw that had a big influence on him as well, no?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: The other film that Stanley Kubrick saw around this time was called UNIVERSE (1960). It was a thirty-minute film made by the National Film Board Of Canada. It was shot on 35mm and was in black-n-white. It was, frankly, a better film than TO THE MOON AND BEYOND. But I think that after seeing both of those films, Kubrick had the validation in his mind and he must have felt comfortable enough that he could actually make 2001 with the content and the quality that he wanted for the Cinerama screen.

--WATCH UNIVERSE (1960) HERE:--

TV STORE ONLINE: When you were asked to work on the film did you see any challenges in the beginning in regards to creating what Stanley Kubrick was envisioning?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: Sure. For example the effects required by Stanley Kubrick for the Jupiter And Beyond Infinite sequence in the film were something that represented a transition from reality through time and space to some other dimension and I thought that was going to be a very tall order.

TV STORE ONLINE: Did you have an idea at the beginning of the production of how you were going to achieve it?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: None of us knew how to go about it really. There were various ideas on how to achieve it. For example there was this idea about a slot in one of Jupiter's moons. Where Dave Bowman would look down into this rectangular monolith shaped opening in the moon and this whole other universe would be revealed on the other side for some unknown reason.

TV STORE ONLINE: I've read about that idea in some of the books about 2001 that have come out over the years...How did that concept develop into the stargate sequence?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: Well, the Jupiter moon idea really got us thinking about a corridor concept. From there, some of the art directors and production designers started messing around with various systems of mirror tricks in an attempt to make this sort of infinite light show but it just didn't work very well. I started to think about the effects from the end sequence of TO THE MOON AND BEYOND that this gentleman named John Witney had done. It was this sort of streaked photography process where he was moving various kinds of animated artwork around while the shutter on the camera would remain open. So he was creating these controlled blurred effects using these different geometric designs.

I thought that this idea would be something that we could apply to this corridor idea but in a three dimensional space. The idea of a blur is very much like if you took your camera and went out and stood by the road and tried to take a picture of a car going past you on the road at night. The headlights and taillights would become long streaks of light if you left your shutter open for a long period of time.

TV STORE ONLINE: So how did you create that incredible sequence in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: We created the slit-scan. It was a device that could create specific patterns of light under very controlled conditions. For example, if we took a light and turned it on and off, that would create a blinking streak of lines on film. Then if you had a point of light.... That would create a solid line of light over a long term exposure. If you blinked that same light off and then on again, the result you would get on film would be a line with dots and dashes in it. If you consider taking a line of light from a florescent bulb and moving that in a three dimensional space relative to where a camera is mounted you'd create a plain of light. So the idea here was to modulate that plain of light by not using a florescent bulb but by using a thin slit that would let light through to the camera lens.

TV STORE ONLINE: Then how exactly did the slit-scan process work?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: So behind some thick paper and glass you had this sort of horizontal animation stand where we had transparencies set in place. On these were various artworks, op art designs, geometric shapes and patterns of different colors. Behind those we had in place very bright lights. The camera was mounted on a track system. The camera would start about fifteen feet away and it would move down the track toward the artwork and getting as close as an inch and a half away from glass and in doing such it would create these streaks of light that contained all these different patterns, shapes and textures. And it was done in a completely blackened out room.

TV STORE ONLINE: So how long did the whole process take?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: It took months and months to do. The f stop was fixed at f/1.8. It was pretty much wide open. And to resolve any possible issues that we'd have with the focus as the camera moved along I made a motor controlled cam that would auto focus the lenses on the slit at any distance. So there was an accumulated infinite number of focal distances on each frame of film. It would take the camera approximately one minute to run down the track and expose one frame of film, and it would be focusing the entire time. We'd have to do this process twice for each frame of film cause we could only shoot one side of the light corridor at a time. For example, once we exposed the left side of the film, we'd have to rewind the film, and start the camera back at the top of the track then go again capturing the right side of the light corridor. Each frame of film you see in that final sequence took four minutes of time to create. Because it would take one minute of exposure time to do the left side of the corridor, then another minute to do the right side, then two minutes of reset time for the camera as it completed the movement.

TV STORE ONLINE: Was there any trial and error in the whole process?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: There wasn't really any trial and error with the slit-scan process. I had done some early tests on an animation stand. We had a vertical animation stand that had a 65mm camera on it facing straight down onto a platten. It was called an Oxbury. We also had a Poloroid camera that fit right in front of the lenses. We'd shoot Poloroids of every single set up in the movie first. Stanley Kubrick amassed a huge collection of Poloroids because he wouldn't even look at anything unless it was a Poloroid first. So every set up in the movie was tested first on Poloroid and checked for composition and brightness, color and possible exposure issues.

I had the Poloroid set up on the Oxbury stand, so we could make Kubrick these Poloroid tests. I ran the camera with the shutter all the way open from the top to the bottom with the slit back-lit on the platten to see if I could create this same streaking effect. And sure enough, it produced this kind of corridor of light on the Poloroid. So I took the Poloroid down to Kubrick's office immediately and showed it to him, and said that I thought that this was the way that we should create this corridor of light idea. Kubrick asked me how I had done it, and I told him. He said, "OK, what do you need to do this this?" So I told him that we needed to build this big machine. I told him that it would require some gears, and some motors, some giant sheets of glass, and a camera with a focus cam. I had it pretty much designed already in my head before I had went down to talk to Kubrick about it. So Kubrick said, "Go ahead and build it."

From there I was able to move about the studio and get all these different departments working on what I needed to build the slit-scan. I had the engineering department, the machine shop, glass shop, and the metal shop assemble all of the components that I needed right away. The track in which the camera would be mounted on we needed to have specially machined. There was a company in Saginaw, Michigan who machined the track called, the Saginaw Ball Screw Company. And because of the length of it and the speed in which we needed it completed, we had it air-freighted to England cause it was the only thing in the world that we could get for the camera that would allow it to move smoothly on.

TV STORE ONLINE: I've read in some places that you had a very unique way of unwinding or de-stressing after a long day of working on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY?

Trumbull directing
Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood in
BRAINSTORM (1983)

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: I had a trampoline on the back lot of MGM Borehamwood Studios. I had it placed in an old barn. The entire back lot of MGM was a sheep farm at the time. But there were all kinds of sets and props rotting away on the back lot as well. So I had the studio rent me a trampoline and put it out back there so we could use it to take off and go get some exercise during the day if we needed it.

TV STORE ONLINE: As with TO THE MOON AND BEYOND a couple years earlier...Did you do any of the artwork for 2001?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: I painted all the stars that you see in the film. I made all the planets. I made Jupiter, and I made Jupiter's moons. I designed most of the lunar landscapes and built many of them as well. I also made the security badges that you see the actors wearing in the space station briefing scene.

TV STORE ONLINE: Were there any ideas that perhaps fell between the cracks due to time or budget that you or Kubrick wanted to attempt in regards to the special effects or stargate sequence but couldn't?

Still from the Stargate Sequence of
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: There was an idea to create a "City Of Light" for the Jupiter And Beyond Infinite section of the film. Toward the end of filming, Stanley Kubrick felt that he had all of the stargate material that he needed. But I suggested that he could in fact use this slit-scan technique to create a city of light or even create aliens of light. So Kubrick approved for me to start working on it. I had to modify the slit-scan machine that we had built. I had to modify it so I could put up thousands of little miniature light bulbs that were in various patterns. I had them set up so they could be sequenced on and off with these micro switches as the camera went along it's track. Doing this, gave this photographic effect that looked like you were moving past these high rise buildings made of nothing but pure light.

TV STORE ONLINE: What about the creation of an alien? I've read about that in books about the film but they never fully explain it really. Could you talk about that?

Keir Dullea and Stanley Kubrick shooting

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: We started shooting these tests to create aliens made of pure light. These aliens were figures that looked like envelopes of pure light. But they had a humanoid shape. They had a head, torso, arms and then legs, but they were just comprised of light. By the time all of this happened we were running out of time. Kubrick was getting pressure from MGM to deliver the film. So he decided that he wasn't going to use the footage. So Kubrick just said, "Forget about it." So all of this stuff, the "City Of Light" and the aliens were never used and it's never been seen to this day.

TV STORE ONLINE: Was the process of creating this alien different than how you'd worked on the stargate sequence itself?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: Yes. We made an attempt at creating the aliens by doing some photographic tests on some alien statues that were sculpted by Kubrick's wife, Christiane. Then we did some other experiments as well with Dan Richter. Richter was the actor who played "Moon-Watcher" in The Dawn Of Man sequence in the film. They designed this leotard outfit for him. It was all white and it was covered with black polka dots. So they put him in that suit and shot some footage of him at very unusual angles. He looked like just a pattern in a suit. We called him "Polka-Dot Man". The idea behind that was to take the footage of Richter and composite it into what we called "Purple Hearts." Purple Hearts was just a terms that we used to describe that solarisation technique that you see in the finished film.

They were going to solarize this footage of Dan Richter as he was doing this sort of subtle strange movement. The idea was to hopefully get this sort of organic alien entity out of this. But again, Kubrick just ran out of time. So he couldn't explore it farther. He didn't have the time to take these ideas and go further with them and see how they would turn out with the proper coloring done on the test footage. I even tried a video television feedback system. I discovered that you could aim a close circuit camera back at it's own television monitor and if you adjusted it right you would get it started into this weird video feedback that looked like an organic pulsating form. We did end up photographing it and Kubrick did like it. He thought it did have promise. But again, at the end of the day there just wasn't enough time to explore the concept any further.

TV STORE ONLINE: Then what about the "Star-Child" that closes out the film? Did you have any involvement in creating that for the film?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: The Star-Child was a sculpture. It was done by a local English sculptor named Liz Moore. She had sculpted the fetus shaped child based off of the photographs of photographer Lennart Nilsson. Nilsson was the first person to photograph an embryo In utero. It was a big deal back then and his pictures made the cover of Time Magazine during the early '60s. Stanley Kubrick really liked his photos. So Liz Moore sculpted Keir Dullea as a baby and the sculpture had these moving eyes put into it. It was the only part of the sculpture that actually moved. The whole thing had to be lit under very harsh and extreme lighting conditions. There was a heavy amount of gauze filters on the lights which sort of defused it some and made it look very mysterious. So what I did was paint that envelope of light, that glow around it that appeared to be a placenta. And we just put them together on the animation stand.

TV STORE ONLINE: Did you do any work on the centrifuge set for the film?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: I designed all the animation on all of the computer screens you see in the film. We called them "house readouts." In particular the read-outs you see in the centrifuge portion of the film; those were done on a animation stand and then rear projected via a 16mm projector. In fact we had 16 projectors bolted down and attached to the outside of the centrifuge. They didn't anticipate what the problems would be with this idea and they didn't anticipate how the reels of film would react to being turned upside down as the centrifuge turned. The reels of film fell off the projectors, the bulbs would blow out. Everything that could've gone wrong with those projectors did.

TV STORE ONLINE: Didn't Kubrick originally want Bowman and Poole to go to a different planet than Jupiter?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: Originally Kubrick was considering the idea of having Bowman and Poole arrive at Saturn and not Jupiter. The original idea was that the destination would be Saturn and while we had some really talented illustrators working on 2001 they couldn't paint Saturn at all. They just couldn't make it believable in any way so Kubrick kind of backed off on it. At the time, there were no good photographs of Saturn or Jupiter for that matter. The only thing available at that time were these blurry photographs that were taken through a telescope. The illustrators kind of knew about the red spot and the bands of color and everything but nobody knew anything about the turbulence of detail with Saturn.

So after a while, it was decided to go back and figure out a way to produce a convincing Jupiter, and that's when I came up with the idea of building what I called "The Jupiter Machine". And that was just taking the slit-scan technique and turning it into a different kind of device that would rotate to create a spherical painting.

TV STORE ONLINE: Can you recall seeing any of the cut scenes that either didn't make the first edit of the film or were removed following the first few screenings on the East Coast? If so, could you tell me about them?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: There was a scene that was cut from the film that I remember where Dr. Floyd has this extensive conversation with his daughter about a Bushbaby and then goes to another site where he's talking to a woman who is selling Bushbabies at a Macy's department store. And as I recall you see Dr. Floyd talking to a salesperson about purchasing the Bushbaby. It was really a redundant scene I thought and I saw no reason for it to remain in the film.

I remember other scenes that played in The Dawn Of Man sequence. But I recall some portions of that were just extended out too. Then there were some other scenes that Kubrick cut out involving some Hal 9000 read-outs that depicted some testing of the AE35 unit that went on and on that were cut out. There were many many little things throughout the film that Kubrick cut out. I believe around seventeen minutes in total were cut by Kubrick and Ray Lovejoy before the film was released wide.

TV STORE ONLINE: Do you think that the footage of 2001 that was discovered a couple years ago in that salt mine in Kansas is some of the stuff that you just mentioned that was cut? I've heard rumors that it might be a reel of footage that Kubrick used to show MGM executives when they came to check on the production once it had gone over schedule in shooting. Do you think it could be that?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: When the MGM executives came to Borehamwood they were shown a reel of footage out of continuity to just relax the uneasiness back in Los Angeles is all. They weren't allowed to take anything back with them. Kubrick showed it to them under his strict supervision. It included some stuff from the centrifuge, the pod bay, and a bit of the water surface footage that was used in the stargate later on. It was just a sampling because Kubrick did not want to unveil any tricks in regards to how the story was to unfold, so I doubt that was what was discovered in that salt mine in Kansas.

TV STORE ONLINE: Looking back today, there seems to have just a wonderful and optimistic outlook on the discovery of Extraterrestrials in the early/mid 1960's whereas people today think it's a joke, it's not taken seriously and no one seems to care anymore about what could be out there beyond the stars. Why has the sociological outlook changed so much in regards to such a possible discovery?

DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: You're right. There's a closeted opinion about it these days isn't there? Back when 2001 was made there really was a very optimistic attitude about it And I think it's because of all the UFO sightings and alien abductions phenomena that's been reported over the years. Nobody in the scientific or academic community will touch the subject matter today for risk of humiliation publicly. If you ask anyone today if there's life in the universe, they'll say "Yes." But if you ask them if UFO's or aliens have ever been to Earth they'll say, "I don't wanna talk about it."

Douglas Trumbull will be the recipient of the first ever Vision Award at the this year's 2013 world renowned Locarno Film Festival in Italy. For more with the legendary writer/director, special effects pioneer and inventor please visit Douglas Trumbull's official website HERE:

Interview Conducted By: Justin Bozung

http://blog.tvstoreonline.com/2013/07/academy-award-winner-special-effects.html

[AdamSmith]

2001 man-ape costume!

http://peakoil.com/generalideas/the-central-contradiction-in-the-modern-outlook-planet-of-the-apes-vs-2001-a-space-odyssey

[AdamSmith]

How did they shoot the leopard scenes in '2001'? Dan Richter explains

Back in October, 1966, Dan Richter was a struggling mime artist in London when he received a call summoning him to discuss the incomplete opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Deeply impressed by the talented young mime, Kubrick promptly hired him to choreograph and star in “The Dawn of Man” sequence as Moonwatcher, the leader of the man-ape tribe. Set three million years ago, this prologue to the space-based sequences tells the story of a tribe of our ancestors, who take the first step on the long road to modern humanity.

Source: Moonwatcher's Memoir

Since I first saw 2001 and "The Dawn Of Man" I've always been fascinated by that sequence, and amazed by the appearance of that magnificent leopard (I'm a big feline lover).

I always wondered how they could have shot that scenes - until 2002, when Moonwatcher's himself, Dan Richter, published Moonwatcher's Memoir: A Diary or 2001: A Space Odyssey.

With Memoir Richter wrote the best account ever about working on 2001: the stories about Kubrick, Stuart Freeborn (the make-up wizard) and all the cast and crew involved are so vivid that seem to be hot off the press, right from a 1968 newspaper - and indeed they somehow are, as Richter based the book upon his own diary wrote in the years 1966-1967.

The book is a treasure trove of anectodes, and it's an essential reading for all 2001 fans. It also includes a few pages dedicated to the leopard shot, that was extended and clarified by a later series of interviews with Richter (among which I'd like to recommend the one conducted by Justin Bozung). I had the chance to ask 'Moonwatcher' a few questions about the leopard scenes and other few details, to which Dan very kindly answered.

As a complete account of 'The Dawn of Man' is already available in Memoir (did I already say 'buy it right now' ?) I will therefore focus on a fascinating aspect of the sequence: the shooting of the leopard attack, with a complete account that draws from all the available sources. My heartfelt thanks to Dan Richter, to Justin Bozung for his always excellent work, and special thanks to Jamie Clubb (http://jamieclubb.blogspot.it/), that provided me with unpublished details about Terry Duggan and the animals used on the set.

* * *

Determined to make an anthropologically accurate film, Kubrick insisted on much more than the worn convention of men jumping around in “monkey suits.” Richter and his collaborators spent weeks watching apes in the London zoo, followed by months of rehearsal mimicking their movements, helped by the analysis of rare footage of gorillas and other apes in their natural habitat.

Test footage of the 'men-apes' practicing primate behaviour. Source: 2001: the making of the myth

The script, at that time still being reworked on an almost daily basis by Kubrick and Clarke, called also for sequences where our ancestors were to be shown on the verge of extinction, and facing constant threat of wild animals like lions and tigers. How to portray this menace was still to be determined, as many attempts had already been made before Richter came on board. Here's an example from Kubrick's interview to Jeremy Bernstein, 1966:

At this point, a man carrying a stuffed lion's head approached and asked Kubrick whether it would be all right to use. "The tongue looks phony, and the eyes are only marginal," Kubrick said, heading for the set. "Can somebody fix the tongue"?

In an early version of the script a lion's head was to be shown mounted atop a tree branch by Moonwatcher and his tribe, to instill terror upon a rival tribe. Kubrick was probably examining an early attempt to render such scene filmable; but whatever the lion's head was to be used for - clearly its phony condition was never improved enough for the director, as it doesn't appear in the movie and Richter doesn't even remember to have seen it - Kubrick turned to real wild beasts for the shooting of the most menacing scenes.

From an entry in Richter's entry in the book dated January 2, 1967:

(Kubrick): "When are you going down to the South Hampton Zoo?"

(Our animal trainers from Jimmy Chipperfield's have put the animals we will need for "The Dawn of Man" in the South Hampton zoo. We have tapirs, a chimp, a zebra, a lion, and a leopard.)

"I'm going down this weekend [...] I'm meeting the trainer Terry Duggan and he is going to show them to me.

"Take lots of pictures. I want to see Duggan staging his play fights with the lion and the leopard. I haven't decided which one to use yet."

Terry Duggan was a acrobat and stuntman born in Coventry in 1935 (no relation with Terry Duggan the comedian). Duggan had already worked with the Chipperfield's, a famous british circus, and later joined a member of the family, Jimmy, who had started a film animal business and at that time of the shooting of 2001 was operating Southampton Zoo. In fact, Jimmy was the main supplier of animals for films during the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

Terry Duggan, four lionesses, one lion and two leopards (1964) (Source)

Kubrick eventually opted out for the leopard. When asked if he remembered why, Richter said to me that

We had both a leopard and a lion at the Southhampton Zoo for at least a year before the shoot and Terry Duggan worked with them all that time do that they would be familiar with the play fighting they did. They were both well trained.

Why Stanley picked one over another I don’t know. The lion was a lioness and perhaps in the end not as menacing looking or as visually interesting.

Terry Duggan practicing with the leopard at the Southampton Zoo, 1967. Richter: "Duggan is teaching the animal to pounce on him and to play-fight in a way that looks convincing." Sources of both picture and text: Moonwatcher's Memoir

From now on we'll focus on a single date, Monday, August 28th, 1967. The 'Dawn of Men' shooting had already begun on August 2; that meant that after eight months of research and rehersals, and a month of physically demanding shots, the man-apes 'tribe' (mimes, dancers and performers chosen and trained by Richter) had yet to face another ordeal. From "Moonwatcher's Memoir":

Today we are going to shoot the scene where the leopard will attack and kill one of the man-apes. Over the weekend the construction crew has changed the set to a riverbed and built a makeshift barrier between the set and the camera.

When I asked him about the barrier (no picture of the shoot are known to exist) Richter noted that he doesn't remember the specific details:

I was paying more attention to the leopard and my guys.

It's legitimate concern, and here's why. Until Richter's book came out, all we knew about the scene came from what Kubrick himself had written in a document ('Notes on special Effects") reported in Bizony's book 2001: filming the future and written as part of his 1969 Academy Award submissions:

Duggan and the leopard were entirely alone on stage during the shoot. [bizony adds]: Background performers were added later, in a hand-drawn matte.

I imagine that Kubrick had to downplay the potential danger faced by his ape-men cast in order to a avoid any unconfortable questions from some actor's guild; it turned out, instead, that everything was shot on camera, and Richter and other man-apes were on the same set with the leopard and Duggan, as Richter remembers in the book:

Terry Duggan is outfitted in a man-ape costume. [...] Stanley wants other man-apes in the background, and that is even more of a problem. The solution is to put me in another mask behind Terry, in the middle ground with the other guys, so that I will be between the leopard and them.

The leopard attacks Duggan. Richter, the second from the right, is on a platform closer to the camera, between the forefront and the other man-apes in the background.

So far, so good. Again from the book:

Stanley is very unconfortable standing next to the camera with the leopard thirty feet or so in front of him. We are all scared. Stanley wants the shot. You can hear the trepidation in his voice as he says "action". Nothing happens.

The leopard, confused and nervous, is distracted by the set, the strong lights, and the surrounding crew.

Stanley calls "cut". We had reharsed the leopard with Terry in costume so we knew he could do it. Terry goes over to talk to him and tries to get him in a playful mood.

"I think he'll do it now", he says.

We all get into position again. The lights are right, the camera begins to turn. Once again Stanley says, "action"...

...and things quickly turn for the worse:

... The leopard looks at Terry and then he looks over at me and the guys behind me.

He jumps down on the set between Terry and me and starts to come at me!

Terry sees what is happening and immediately tackles him. We take a short break and Terry works with him some more.

The second take, more or less, works: it's the one we see in the movie. Richter recalls:

Contrary to Stanley’s usual style we did only a few takes as he was nervous and wanted to get it over. He was never happy with what we got, but lived with it.

At this stage, Kubrick was more than ready to move on, even if it meant accepting an unexpected 'special effect', as we learn from Bozung's interview:

[...] then there was the front projection system mistake with the leopard. If you watch the film you'll see that shot of the leopard turning his head toward the camera and his eyes are lit up and glowing. That was just a happy accident. No one noticed it during shooting, but when we all went to the rushes everyone saw it, and someone said “Oh look what happened? We've screwed up!” Stanley said, “No, it's great. I love it. Let's keep it.”

Every cat owner knows that the eyes of the leopard glowed because of a tissue in the eye that reflects visible light back through the retina, increasing the light available to the photoreceptors, contributing to the superior night vision of the animal. As the scene was shot using the Sinar front-projection system that used 8x10 inches transparencies on a 110-feet-wide screen covered by 3M reflective material, the eye of the leopard worked just as the reflective material of the background.

The leopard is ready to strike again. On the right, Richter and the other man-apes watch in non-simulated anxiety.

* * *

The unnamed leopard also appeared in a second scene, with a "dead zebra". One of my recent posts featured an interview to Gino Pellegrini, an italian set decorator who worked on that scene:

On the set there were also a few wooden boulders which were meant to give a sense of depth. For example, in the leopard scene,

the large boulder beneath the animal was a wooden prop built on purpose, in order to conceal the leash used to restrain the leopard

. The leash was cancelled later optically.

How is this related to the attack scene? Well, in the 1970 book The Making of Kubrick's 2001, which was edited by Jerome Agel with more than a little help from Kubrick himself, a caption for this picture says:

Dead horse was painted to look like a zebra. Scene of live leopard with "zebra" was filmed with tranquilizer guns at the ready. Due to horse's stench, leopard and camera crew were unenthusiastic about doing the scene.

When asked about such guns during the attack scene, here's what Richter told me:

I do not remember tranquilizers gun in our scene, but I wasn't present when Stanley shot the scene with the dead zebra.

As far as the 'zebra' scene was concerned, this makes perfect sense: why have guns if the leopard was already restrained by a leash? At the same time, I wonder: if there was a scene where tranquilizers would have come handy, it was the attack scene.
We will probably never know. Anyway, it was nice to have Terry Duggan handy, that day.

P.S. Remember the scene where the lion's head had to be carried around triumphantly by Moonwatcher's tribe? The script originally called for the actual killing of that lion to be shown in the movie. Imagine having to set up that shot!

* * *

(dec.11: the article has been updated with the removal of the picture of Terry Duggan the comedian, who was not the Duggan involved with the Chipperlfield's and 2001. As Mission Control would say, IMDB and Wikipedia are "in error" in saying that they were the same person. Source: Mr.Duggan' sister thanks to Jamie Clubb.)

http://www.2001italia.it/2013/12/how-did-they-shoot-leopard-scenes.html

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

(Click on the image to blow it up and make it legible.)

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]