Hacker Remix

Scratches in 2001: A Space Osyssey (2018)

121 points by hyperific 4 days ago | 53 comments

shawa_a_a 3 days ago

In the spirit of scratches, it was only at a recent 70mm film screening that I spotted the rig used for the floating pen scene as Floyd falls asleep in the shuttle.

As the weightlessness begins, his pen floats away - if you look really really carefully you can spot that it’s actually embedded in a thin plastic film which is rotating about an axis, given away by minute scratches on its surface.

cgh 3 days ago

They literally taped the pen to a sheet of glass, which they rotated around. As low-tech as it gets but it looks wonderful, except I guess for the scratches you spotted.

JKCalhoun 3 days ago

BTW, there is a YouTube user (1) that has created "video loops" that look like these displays from the film that you could use as a screensaver or what-have-you. Very cool.

1) https://www.youtube.com/@TheHALProject

pndy 3 days ago

I think folks behind this did a great job imitating HAL and other computer screens seen in the film. Wish it would be a part of XScreenSaver project.

cylinder714 3 days ago

There's an item in the FAQ at jwz.org/xscreensaver that explains how to use a video as a source.

accrual 3 days ago

These are really quite cool and well done, thanks for sharing

rwmj 3 days ago

What's interesting is that Kubrick, famous for 100 takes to get everything right, didn't spot this, or if he did was unable/unwilling to fix it.

jvanderbot 3 days ago

Even after it was called out, and after looking at it, it still looks like a low res planet crescent or other attempts to make animated logo graphics. Why are we sure that wasn't the intent?

zoeysmithe 3 days ago

I think the "perfectionist" is social and Hollywood (and tabliod/lawsuit) cover for "this person abuses people on set." In Kubrick's case it certainly was, famously with Duvall in the Shining, but rumored with other talent too.

tehnub 3 days ago

Exaggerations and rumors. See my other post on this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40006453

optimalsolver 3 days ago

Evidence he was more doing that to project an image (no pun intended) than anything.

yawpitch 3 days ago

> Today, [Douglas] Trumbull is a highly regarded special effects supervisor

Love this article and its maniacal detail orientation, but man what an understatement; the late Doug Trumbull is highly regarded, in the SFX/VFX context in much the same way as Einstein was a highly regarded physicist.

shiroiushi 3 days ago

It's really too bad his Magicam system on "The Starlost" didn't pan out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlost#Development_and_p...