2001: A Space Odyssey
1968 · dir. Stanley Kubrick

Scene from the film “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Stanley Kubrick, 1968. Furniture by Olivier Mourgue, 1965.

I’m afraid. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I’m afraid.

2001 : A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), dir. Stanley Kubrick

Robert McCall poster art for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

“Powerful lights permitted high camera speeds, crucial in capturing the high-speed alchemy of surface tension, color change, and chemical reaction that [Kubrick and his collaborators] were after. The overcranked camera shooting at seventy-two frames per second produced a smoothly nuanced “galactic” slow motion as they used toothpicks to drip blobs of white paint into the ink-thinner mixture. Reacting to the banana oil, the paint sent ersatz star flows and galactic tendrils streaming into cosmic space. A macro lens made an area the size of a playing card look like a nebula light years across. Parts of what would become the film’s trippy Star Gate sequences were conjured in this way on the Upper West Side in 1965, with Kubrick himself manning the camera…”

Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

Keir Dullea on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) dir. Stanley Kubrick

Robert McCall poster art for 2001: A Space Odyssey.