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| Fig.1 |
Kubrick's direction of this film is hard to follow, there are four main parts to the film; the first being apes learning to use tools after touching a monolith, the second is a group of people visiting a monolith and then being incapacitated by it, the third follows two awake men and others who are still asleep aboard a space ship with an AI called HAL 9000 which malfunctions and kills all but one of the crew, David Bowman (Keir Dullea), who then manages to shut down HAL and then leaves to investigate another of the monoliths that is in orbit, which leads to a rather trippy nine minute scene ending in various scenes of Bowman getting older and older until it ends with a fetus encased in a bubble and orbiting Earth.
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| Fig.2 |
The film may confuse people who aren't used to reading deep into films, and will leave them with more questions than answers, "What he had actually done was make a philosophical statement about man's place in the universe, using images as those before him had used words, music or prayer." (Ebert 1997)
Kubrick's desire for the film to be as authentic as possible lead the design to do meticulous research, and even getting designers of the time to try and predict what they believe designs even as small as the chairs would eventually look like. "[...] much of the set design accurately forecasted how we live with technology today. “The executive briefcase with its phone handset and dial? Look closely, and all the elements of the laptop or smartphone are there, half a century ahead of time,” Bizony tells WIRED. You could also, for example, see HAL 9000 as a proto-Siri." (Rhodes 2015)
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| Fig.3 |
The special effects of the space ships and space station were created by models, "More than a hundred modelmakers assisted him and the other members of the art crew in this task. For greater authenticity, production of many of the film’s props, such as spacesuits and instrument panels, was outsourced to various aerospace and engineering companies." (DeMet 1999)
Although using models makes them look incredibly life like, it feels a bit off when trying to equate the scale of the station to the scenes shown inside of it.
Bibliography:
Images:
Figure 1, Poster (1968) [poster] At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2001_A_Space_Odyssey_(1968)_theatrical_poster_variant.jpg (Accessed on 22 October 2017)
Figure 2, Film still (1968) [Film still] At: http://www.sci-guys.com/content/2015/03/31/sci-guys-podcast-172/ (Accessed on 22 October 2017)
Figure 3, Film still (1968) [film still] At: https://2001archive.org/resources/the-special-effects-of-2001-a-space-odyssey/ (Accessed on 22 October 2017)
Quotes:
George DeMet (1999) At: https://2001archive.org/resources/the-special-effects-of-2001-a-space-odyssey/
Margaret Rhodes (2015) At: https://www.wired.com/2015/08/amazingly-accurate-futurism-2001-space-odyssey/ (Accessed on 22 October 2017)
Roger Ebert (1997) At: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-2001-a-space-odyssey-1968 (Accessed on 22 October 2017)
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