Author Topic: The Making of 2001  (Read 5762 times)

Offline onebigmonkey

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The Making of 2001
« on: January 25, 2016, 02:18:23 AM »
Three 25 minute videos explores how Kubrick made his epic film, including one section on the moon sequences (interior and exterior).

It's fascinating stuff (if read a little too quickly for my taste) and reveals just how much planning, space and how many people were involved in even relatively short sequences.

Hoax nuts will no doubt watch and proclaim "See! See how it could have been done!".

When I watch it I think "see how complex and technically difficult it would have been to do it and still not get lunar gravity in a vacuum right".

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/watch-75-minute-video-essay-breaks-down-the-making-of-stanley-kubricks-2001-a-space-odyssey-20160122


Offline bknight

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Re: The Making of 2001
« Reply #1 on: January 25, 2016, 06:00:54 AM »
To be fair, the illusion of a Moon mission is easy to produce, maybe not as much in the 60's and 70's, but doable.
Now the effects of 1/6 gravity and near Zero atmosphere was much more difficult/impossible to produce.  Of course this points me back to Collin's video to the Blunder concerning filming everything at different rates with the equipment in the 60's   So yes the HB can/will indicate how easy it was, completely ignoring the obvious (to us).
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Offline Dr_Orpheus

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Re: The Making of 2001
« Reply #2 on: January 25, 2016, 06:53:43 AM »
One poster on this board claimed that Kubrick deliberately used poor quality effects on the lunar surface footage of 2001, to make the footage he produced for NASA look more authentic.   The original argument was that the 2001 footage looked just as convincing,  but the poster modified the original claim drastically after mistakes in the 2001 footage were pointed out.

Offline ineluki

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Re: The Making of 2001
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2016, 08:29:28 AM »
to make the footage he produced for NASA look more authentic.

Which, as i can't resist bringing up again, goes completely against the "alleged" mistakes (*cough* waving flag etc) which would haven been more at home in the old Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers serials...

Offline Zakalwe

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Re: The Making of 2001
« Reply #4 on: January 25, 2016, 11:15:40 AM »
To be fair, the illusion of a Moon mission is easy to produce, maybe not as much in the 60's and 70's, but doable.


Yet Hollywood, for all its $millions, has yet to do it.I have never seen any representation that cuts the mustard.
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Offline onebigmonkey

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Re: The Making of 2001
« Reply #5 on: January 25, 2016, 11:52:28 AM »
To be fair, the illusion of a Moon mission is easy to produce, maybe not as much in the 60's and 70's, but doable.


Yet Hollywood, for all its $millions, has yet to do it.I have never seen any representation that cuts the mustard.

The bit I found interesting was when the creators of the moon models were having to update the craters as more details from NASA came in. As they started in 1965, this would pre-date the lunar orbiter photographs that would have come in during production.

Offline bknight

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Re: The Making of 2001
« Reply #6 on: January 25, 2016, 01:30:43 PM »
To be fair, the illusion of a Moon mission is easy to produce, maybe not as much in the 60's and 70's, but doable.


Yet Hollywood, for all its $millions, has yet to do it.I have never seen any representation that cuts the mustard.
Oh I agree with that, just saying it was possible to film the video part, not the environmental part.  Eve the more recent ones leave a hole in believability.  I guess it is hard for them to get their heads around the real space other world effects.
Truth needs no defense.  Nobody can take those footsteps I made on the surface of the moon away from me.
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Offline smartcooky

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Re: The Making of 2001
« Reply #7 on: January 25, 2016, 01:38:33 PM »
To be fair, the illusion of a Moon mission is easy to produce, maybe not as much in the 60's and 70's, but doable.


Yet Hollywood, for all its $millions, has yet to do it.I have never seen any representation that cuts the mustard.

And frankly, I can't see any way it could be done with "live" action. How do you make dust appear to act like it does in 1/6th G and in a vacuum? As SG Collins clearly demonstrated, over-cranking doesn't work. The only way I can see it happening is with 100% realistic animation which was nowhere near being available in 1969.

People can debate the engineering, the shadows, the lighting, the waving flags, the tracking and telecommunications and the functionality of spacesuits as much as they like, but for mine the smoking gun is the impossibility of duplicating what we all saw on television in 1969 - the impossibility of duplicating the lunar surface environment of 1/6th G and vacuum!

If you're not a scientist but you think you've destroyed the foundation of a vast scientific edifice with 10 minutes of Googling, you might want to consider the possibility that you're wrong.

Offline bknight

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Re: The Making of 2001
« Reply #8 on: January 25, 2016, 02:54:38 PM »
To be fair, the illusion of a Moon mission is easy to produce, maybe not as much in the 60's and 70's, but doable.


Yet Hollywood, for all its $millions, has yet to do it.I have never seen any representation that cuts the mustard.

And frankly, I can't see any way it could be done with "live" action. How do you make dust appear to act like it does in 1/6th G and in a vacuum? As SG Collins clearly demonstrated, over-cranking doesn't work. The only way I can see it happening is with 100% realistic animation which was nowhere near being available in 1969.

People can debate the engineering, the shadows, the lighting, the waving flags, the tracking and telecommunications and the functionality of spacesuits as much as they like, but for mine the smoking gun is the impossibility of duplicating what we all saw on television in 1969 - the impossibility of duplicating the lunar surface environment of 1/6th G and vacuum!
As I mentioned in my earlier post, I loved Collin's video back at the Blunder, and I think in one of the videos he said something like we could do the real thin in the 60's and not do any filming, whereas today we can do filming, but not do the real thing. :(
Truth needs no defense.  Nobody can take those footsteps I made on the surface of the moon away from me.
Eugene Cernan

Offline ka9q

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Re: The Making of 2001
« Reply #9 on: January 26, 2016, 01:52:48 AM »
It'd be hard enough to replicate what we see on videos of the Apollo lunar EVAs, but we don't have any video or film at all of astronauts in the LM cabin, in 1/6 g and out of their suits. The best we have are short clips of synthetic 1/6 g on airplanes (e.g., Mythbusters), but even that's not totally accurate since the planes don't fly an exact path (small control errors, turbulence, etc). You can sometimes see this problem in scenes in Apollo 13 where a floating object (or actor) starts moving or takes a turn for no reason. You could eliminate this effect by having the entire set float within the airplane cabin as long as the plane flies the parabolic path accurately enough to keep the set from contacting the cabin interior. But you can't do that during synthetic 1/6 g.

So... how do you do scenes like the conference room on the moon in 2001? Even today nobody even tries to replicate lunar gravity in interior sets of movies set on the moon, e.g., Moon.

What amused me was how Moon and other films copied the look of old cheesy SF shows like Space 1999 in depicting normal earth gravity inside the lunar base, but as soon as anybody goes outside they move in slow motion.

Offline gillianren

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Re: The Making of 2001
« Reply #10 on: January 26, 2016, 02:00:27 AM »
Heck, The Martian went with the old reliable rotating drum for its craft and didn't even attempt reduced Martian gravity.
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Offline Zakalwe

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Re: The Making of 2001
« Reply #11 on: January 26, 2016, 03:22:08 AM »
Oh I agree with that, just saying it was possible to film the video part, not the environmental part.  Eve the more recent ones leave a hole in believability.  I guess it is hard for them to get their heads around the real space other world effects.

No, I don't think that it would have been possible. I cannot think of a single movie or documentary that is even nearly convincing. Sure, some of them get parts correct. heck, some even get nearly everything correct. But I cannot recall a single sequence that has a convincing environment and duration that could replicate Apollo video.
Even big ticket movies like the absolutely dire Gravity could not do a convincing zero-G space environment. Anyone with even the slightest modicum of knowledge could pick massive holes in it within a minute or two (hell, i couldn't watch more than 20 minutes of it without wanting to kill Sandra Bullock and Clooney to death).

<edit>

Oh I agree with that, just saying it was possible to film the video part, not the environmental part. 

I think that S.G. Collins pretty much shows that it was impossible to film the video part with the technology available at the time (and indeed for many years afterwards).
« Last Edit: January 26, 2016, 04:44:35 AM by Zakalwe »
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Offline smartcooky

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Re: The Making of 2001
« Reply #12 on: January 26, 2016, 04:02:48 AM »
What amused me was how Moon and other films copied the look of old cheesy SF shows like Space 1999 in depicting normal earth gravity inside the lunar base, but as soon as anybody goes outside they move in slow motion.

Technicality - Moonbase Alpha had artificial gravity indoors....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonbase_Alpha_%28Space:_1999%29#Anti-gravity_towers

"There are eight 'anti-gravity' (?) towers surrounding the Alpha complex; the anti-gravity fields are used to boost the Moon's one-sixth gee gravity and stabilise it to a near one-gee Earth normal within the Moonbase structures"

So walking around normally inside and in lunar gravity outside falls within the show's (admittedly shonky) plot line. ...
If you're not a scientist but you think you've destroyed the foundation of a vast scientific edifice with 10 minutes of Googling, you might want to consider the possibility that you're wrong.

Offline ka9q

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Re: The Making of 2001
« Reply #13 on: January 26, 2016, 07:00:03 AM »
Pure handwaving. Par for the course.

Wall-E was another movie (among many) that had normal gravity but none as soon as you were off the ship. And they don't have the usual excuse of not being able to film convincing reduced gravity as the entire movie was animated.

This was strange as one of the reasons for the bloated, infantile humans was stated to be the lack of gravity in space. Apparently the ship had some sort of gravity field generator that could be switched on or off in a given area, as shown by the sequence in which the probe ship returns EVE (with WALL-E hitchhiking) to the Axiom.