Kubrick's films often feature wide-angle shots but extreme-close ups of the characters going through deeply emotional conflict are distinctive Kubrick technique. These characters tilt their head down and stare towards the camera. this technique is even called 'the Kubrick stare'. Kubrick uses this shot in order to both make the audience uncomfortable and also to help the viewers to identify with the characters' emotions. It is also to draw the audience into the film by breaking the 'fourth wall'. Just as Shakespear's characters can address the audience directly such as the chorus line in 'Romeo and Juliet', Kubrick's can entice, or rather force, viewers to become part of the film. They cannot just watch passively as the characters can see them personally.
Many other directors use close-ups as an establishing sequence as the shot suggests as main character or a sequence of shots establishes a point of view, as well as reaction. But Kubrick has made this camera technique his own.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Color Me Kubrick #3: Location
Another technique Kubrick uses is a repetition of location. All his movies feature a scene in or just outside of the bathroom as well as corridors and halls. the camera tracks down the symmetrical halls. these are the examples below.
This is a scene from 'Full Metal jacket', a film that shows over-the-top training that Marines depicted in the film go through. The scene depicts Pvt. Pyle's 'major malufunction' after being mistreated by many other marines and drill sergeant. It shows what Kubrick is trying to say: when man is pushed too far, the man tends to overload. And the scene is set in the bathroom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_Xek7IQhlw. That scene showed one of the Kubrick's trademark where he shows the film's violent and shocking scenes in the bathrooms.
the next scene is extract from 'The Shinning' which i will not spoil it for you but you'll have to see it for yourself to understand. : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFVyAjj3Bs0
The scene you just saw was set in the hallway with parallel and symmetrical walls. This close-tracking through the architecture leads the audience into feelings of claustrphobia and disorientation, as the close walls all look alike. Anticipation is also built. What will be at the end of the lengthy hallways?
This is a scene from 'Full Metal jacket', a film that shows over-the-top training that Marines depicted in the film go through. The scene depicts Pvt. Pyle's 'major malufunction' after being mistreated by many other marines and drill sergeant. It shows what Kubrick is trying to say: when man is pushed too far, the man tends to overload. And the scene is set in the bathroom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_Xek7IQhlw. That scene showed one of the Kubrick's trademark where he shows the film's violent and shocking scenes in the bathrooms.
the next scene is extract from 'The Shinning' which i will not spoil it for you but you'll have to see it for yourself to understand. : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFVyAjj3Bs0
The scene you just saw was set in the hallway with parallel and symmetrical walls. This close-tracking through the architecture leads the audience into feelings of claustrphobia and disorientation, as the close walls all look alike. Anticipation is also built. What will be at the end of the lengthy hallways?
Colour Me Kubrick #2: Music
Stanley Kubrick is a director with a very distinctive style. He is one of the few directors to almost exclusively use classical music in his soundtracks. This has the effect of making his movies timeless. They are not just fashion, they transend it.
On the other hand, the soundtracks are also used ironically. Most of the time, Kubrick uses the song that is very inappropriate for the scene. the juxtaposition beween the classical opening to a future sceince fiction movie as used in '2001' is obvious as is the jarring use of 'Singing in the Rain' in the disturbing break-in scene in Clockwork Orange.
This is the end scene of Dr. Strangelove where the nukes go off around the planet and the song 'We'll Meet Again' is being played in the background. See how it contrasts the depressing mood the scene shows while the song plays.
Dr Strangelove: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEi8Mj6WDKM
This scene is from 'Clockwork Orange'. Pay attention to the song that one of the intruders is singing while performing some shocking acts. Beware, the video you're about to see is very disturbing.
Clockwork Orange (NSWF): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faML0QvVb2A
This disorientation between the action on the screen and the digestic soundtrack makes the audience feel anxious, even queasy, while giving an insight into the mentality of those commiting the abuse. Just like the break-in scene, Kubrick is showing how those criminals view their actions, as if they were treating it like one of their casual playing times.
On the other hand, the soundtracks are also used ironically. Most of the time, Kubrick uses the song that is very inappropriate for the scene. the juxtaposition beween the classical opening to a future sceince fiction movie as used in '2001' is obvious as is the jarring use of 'Singing in the Rain' in the disturbing break-in scene in Clockwork Orange.
This is the end scene of Dr. Strangelove where the nukes go off around the planet and the song 'We'll Meet Again' is being played in the background. See how it contrasts the depressing mood the scene shows while the song plays.
Dr Strangelove: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEi8Mj6WDKM
This scene is from 'Clockwork Orange'. Pay attention to the song that one of the intruders is singing while performing some shocking acts. Beware, the video you're about to see is very disturbing.
Clockwork Orange (NSWF): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faML0QvVb2A
This disorientation between the action on the screen and the digestic soundtrack makes the audience feel anxious, even queasy, while giving an insight into the mentality of those commiting the abuse. Just like the break-in scene, Kubrick is showing how those criminals view their actions, as if they were treating it like one of their casual playing times.
Colour Me Kubrick #1: Who is Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick is the very man on the title board. In the photo, Kubrick was experimenting with the Leica Camera while he was just a photographer for the magazine Look. Take a good look at the picture, as it will be the indication of what Kubrick's style are going to like; strange and unique.
The films I am going to use in this seminar will include:
-Dr. Strangelove (or how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb)
-2001 Space Odyssey
-A Clockwork Orange
-The Shining
and Full Metal Jacket.
The films I am going to use in this seminar will include:
-Dr. Strangelove (or how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb)
-2001 Space Odyssey
-A Clockwork Orange
-The Shining
and Full Metal Jacket.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Parallel Hallways
Another one of Stanley Kubrick's trademark style is the long, claustophobic hallway with symmetrical walls. They are often used in the scenes where the situation is becoming uncomfortable. For example, in Clockwork Orange, as Alex and his droogs are about to beat the homeless person, we see the walls at each sides reflecting each other at the close range. This gives us uneasy feelings and makes us feel uncomfortable as we see the dreadful event that follows.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Kubrick Stare
One of the Stanley Kubrick's visual trademark is the 'Kubrick Stare' when the characters often briefly glances at the camera directly, and effectively at the audience.
It often occurs whenever the characters/Kubrick are upset or having an emotional reaction. This technique is effective in terms of adding an intense atmosphere, thus creating an air of suspense and pulling us into the situation that the characters are in. The above examples are all 'Kubrick Stares' in his films.
-Top Left: Clockwork Orange: Alex reacts to Dim's reaction when he sees the lady singing in the milk bar
-Top Right: Full Metal Jacket: Before Pvt. Pyle kills himself after murdering Drill Sergeant Hartman.
-Bottom Left: The Shinning: When Jack is staring out at the snow while chasing Danny.
-Bottom Right: Barry Lyndon: When Barry stares at Bullingdon as he makes his speech. Many claim this is the craziest Kubrick stare of all.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Color Me Kubrick Part 2: Early Works to Paths of Glory
Early works
In 1951, Kubrick's friend Alex Singer persuaded him to start making short documentaries for The March of Time, a provider of newsreels to movie theatres. Kubrick agreed, and shot the independently financed Day of the Fight in 1951. The film notably employed a reverse tracking shot, which would become one of Kubrick's signature camera movements. Although its distributor went out of business that year, Kubrick has been said to have sold Day of the Fight to RKO Pictures for a profit of $100, although Kubrick himself said he lost $100 in Jeremy Bernstein, Interview With Stanley Kubrick in 1966. Inspired by this early success, Kubrick quit his job at Look magazine and began working on his second short documentary, Flying Padre (1951), funded by RKO. A third film, The Seafarers (1953), Kubrick's first color film, was a 30-minute promotional film for the Seafarers' International Union.
These three films constitute Kubrick's only surviving work in the documentary genre. However, it is believed that he was involved in other shorts, which have been lost—most notably World Assembly of Youth (1952).[14] He also served as second unit director on an episode of the Omnibus television program about the life of Abraham Lincoln. None of these shorts has ever been officially released, though they have been widely bootlegged, and clips are used in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures. In addition, Day of the Fight and Flying Padre have been shown on TCM.
1950s: Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss, The Killing and Paths of Glory
Kubrick moved to narrative feature films with Fear and Desire (1953), the story of a team of soldiers caught behind enemy lines in a fictional war. Kubrick and his then-wife, Toba Metz, were the only crew on the film, which was written by Kubrick's friend Howard Sackler, who later became a successful playwright. Fear and Desire garnered respectable reviews but was a commercial failure. In later life, Kubrick was embarrassed by the film, which he dismissed as an amateur effort. He refused to allow Fear and Desire to be shown at retrospectives and public screenings and did everything possible to keep it out of circulation. At least one copy remained in the hands of a private collector, and the film subsequently surfaced on VHS and later on DVD.
Kubrick's marriage to Toba Metz ended during the making of Fear and Desire. He met his second wife, Austrian-born dancer and theatrical designer Ruth Sobotka, in 1952. They lived together in the East Village from 1952 until their marriage on January 15, 1955. They moved to Hollywood that summer. Sobotka, who made a cameo appearance in Kubrick's next film, Killer's Kiss (1955), also served as art director on The Killing (1956). Like Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss is a short feature film, with a running time of slightly more than an hour. It met with limited commercial and critical success. The film is about a young heavyweight boxer at the end of his career who gets involved in a love triangle in which his rival is involved with organized crime. Both Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss were privately funded by Kubrick's family and friends.
Although film noir had peaked in the 1940s, both the plot and cinematography of The Killing strongly evoked that genre, and it is now regarded as one of the best of that kind. Note the use of shadows and cigarette smoke; note also the resemblance of the mask to those used in A Clockwork Orange.
Alex Singer introduced Kubrick to a young producer named James B. Harris, and the two became close friends. Their business partnership, Harris-Kubrick Productions, would finance Kubrick's next three films. The two bought the rights to a Lionel White novel called Clean Break, which Kubrick and coscreenwriter Jim Thompson turned into The Killing. The story is about a meticulously planned race track robbery gone wrong after the mobsters get away with the money. (The film title may refer either to the robbery or the subsequent murder of a group of mobsters by a jealous boyfriend). Starring Sterling Hayden, The Killing was Kubrick's first full-length feature film, shot with a professional cast and crew. The resulting film was unusual in 1950s American cinema in that it had a nonlinear storyline, in a manner imitated nearly 40 years later by director Quentin Tarantino in Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino has acknowledged Kubrick's film as a major influence, and critics have noticed the similarity in plot structure. In many ways, The Killing followed the conventions of film noir, both in its plotting and cinematography style. That kind of crime caper film had peaked in the 1940s; but today, many regard this film as one of the best of the noir genre. While it was not a financial success, it received good reviews.
The widespread admiration for The Killing brought Harris-Kubrick Productions to the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The studio offered them its massive collection of copyrighted stories from which to choose their next project. During this time, Kubrick also collaborated with Calder Willingham on an adaptation of the Austrian novel The Burning Secret. Although Kubrick was enthusiastic about the project, it was eventually shelved.
Long before it became film fashion after the Vietnam era, Kubrick portrayed war as brutal, using stark black-and-white images in Paths of Glory.
Kubrick's next film Paths of Glory was set during World War I and based on Humphrey Cobb's 1935 antiwar novel of the same name. It is about a French army unit ordered on an impossible mission by their superiors. As a result of the mission's failure, three innocent soldiers are charged with cowardice, as an example to the other troops. Kirk Douglas was cast as Colonel Dax, a humanitarian officer who tries to prevent the soldiers' execution. Douglas was instrumental in securing financing for the ambitious production. The film was not a significant commercial success, but it was critically acclaimed and widely admired within the industry, establishing Kubrick as a major up-and-coming young filmmaker. Critics over the years have praised the film's unsentimental, spare, and unvarnished combat scenes and its raw black-and-white cinematography. Steven Spielberg has named this one of his favorite Kubrick films.
During the production of Paths of Glory in Munich, Kubrick met and romanced young German actress Christiane Harlan (credited by her stage name, "Susanne Christian"), who played the only female speaking part in the film. Kubrick divorced his second wife, Ruth Sobotka, in 1957. Christiane Susanne Harlan (b. 1932 in Germany) belonged to a theatrical family and had trained as an actress. She and Kubrick married in 1958 and remained together until his death in 1999. During her marriage to Kubrick, Christiane concentrated on a career as a painter. In addition to raising Christiane's young daughter Katharina (b. 1953) from her first marriage to the late German actor Werner Bruhns (d. 1977), the couple had two daughters, Anya (b. 1959) and Vivian (b. 1960). Christiane's brother Jan Harlan was Kubrick's executive producer from 1975 onward.
In 1951, Kubrick's friend Alex Singer persuaded him to start making short documentaries for The March of Time, a provider of newsreels to movie theatres. Kubrick agreed, and shot the independently financed Day of the Fight in 1951. The film notably employed a reverse tracking shot, which would become one of Kubrick's signature camera movements. Although its distributor went out of business that year, Kubrick has been said to have sold Day of the Fight to RKO Pictures for a profit of $100, although Kubrick himself said he lost $100 in Jeremy Bernstein, Interview With Stanley Kubrick in 1966. Inspired by this early success, Kubrick quit his job at Look magazine and began working on his second short documentary, Flying Padre (1951), funded by RKO. A third film, The Seafarers (1953), Kubrick's first color film, was a 30-minute promotional film for the Seafarers' International Union.
These three films constitute Kubrick's only surviving work in the documentary genre. However, it is believed that he was involved in other shorts, which have been lost—most notably World Assembly of Youth (1952).[14] He also served as second unit director on an episode of the Omnibus television program about the life of Abraham Lincoln. None of these shorts has ever been officially released, though they have been widely bootlegged, and clips are used in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures. In addition, Day of the Fight and Flying Padre have been shown on TCM.
1950s: Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss, The Killing and Paths of Glory
Kubrick moved to narrative feature films with Fear and Desire (1953), the story of a team of soldiers caught behind enemy lines in a fictional war. Kubrick and his then-wife, Toba Metz, were the only crew on the film, which was written by Kubrick's friend Howard Sackler, who later became a successful playwright. Fear and Desire garnered respectable reviews but was a commercial failure. In later life, Kubrick was embarrassed by the film, which he dismissed as an amateur effort. He refused to allow Fear and Desire to be shown at retrospectives and public screenings and did everything possible to keep it out of circulation. At least one copy remained in the hands of a private collector, and the film subsequently surfaced on VHS and later on DVD.
Kubrick's marriage to Toba Metz ended during the making of Fear and Desire. He met his second wife, Austrian-born dancer and theatrical designer Ruth Sobotka, in 1952. They lived together in the East Village from 1952 until their marriage on January 15, 1955. They moved to Hollywood that summer. Sobotka, who made a cameo appearance in Kubrick's next film, Killer's Kiss (1955), also served as art director on The Killing (1956). Like Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss is a short feature film, with a running time of slightly more than an hour. It met with limited commercial and critical success. The film is about a young heavyweight boxer at the end of his career who gets involved in a love triangle in which his rival is involved with organized crime. Both Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss were privately funded by Kubrick's family and friends.
Although film noir had peaked in the 1940s, both the plot and cinematography of The Killing strongly evoked that genre, and it is now regarded as one of the best of that kind. Note the use of shadows and cigarette smoke; note also the resemblance of the mask to those used in A Clockwork Orange.
Alex Singer introduced Kubrick to a young producer named James B. Harris, and the two became close friends. Their business partnership, Harris-Kubrick Productions, would finance Kubrick's next three films. The two bought the rights to a Lionel White novel called Clean Break, which Kubrick and coscreenwriter Jim Thompson turned into The Killing. The story is about a meticulously planned race track robbery gone wrong after the mobsters get away with the money. (The film title may refer either to the robbery or the subsequent murder of a group of mobsters by a jealous boyfriend). Starring Sterling Hayden, The Killing was Kubrick's first full-length feature film, shot with a professional cast and crew. The resulting film was unusual in 1950s American cinema in that it had a nonlinear storyline, in a manner imitated nearly 40 years later by director Quentin Tarantino in Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino has acknowledged Kubrick's film as a major influence, and critics have noticed the similarity in plot structure. In many ways, The Killing followed the conventions of film noir, both in its plotting and cinematography style. That kind of crime caper film had peaked in the 1940s; but today, many regard this film as one of the best of the noir genre. While it was not a financial success, it received good reviews.
The widespread admiration for The Killing brought Harris-Kubrick Productions to the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The studio offered them its massive collection of copyrighted stories from which to choose their next project. During this time, Kubrick also collaborated with Calder Willingham on an adaptation of the Austrian novel The Burning Secret. Although Kubrick was enthusiastic about the project, it was eventually shelved.
Long before it became film fashion after the Vietnam era, Kubrick portrayed war as brutal, using stark black-and-white images in Paths of Glory.
Kubrick's next film Paths of Glory was set during World War I and based on Humphrey Cobb's 1935 antiwar novel of the same name. It is about a French army unit ordered on an impossible mission by their superiors. As a result of the mission's failure, three innocent soldiers are charged with cowardice, as an example to the other troops. Kirk Douglas was cast as Colonel Dax, a humanitarian officer who tries to prevent the soldiers' execution. Douglas was instrumental in securing financing for the ambitious production. The film was not a significant commercial success, but it was critically acclaimed and widely admired within the industry, establishing Kubrick as a major up-and-coming young filmmaker. Critics over the years have praised the film's unsentimental, spare, and unvarnished combat scenes and its raw black-and-white cinematography. Steven Spielberg has named this one of his favorite Kubrick films.
During the production of Paths of Glory in Munich, Kubrick met and romanced young German actress Christiane Harlan (credited by her stage name, "Susanne Christian"), who played the only female speaking part in the film. Kubrick divorced his second wife, Ruth Sobotka, in 1957. Christiane Susanne Harlan (b. 1932 in Germany) belonged to a theatrical family and had trained as an actress. She and Kubrick married in 1958 and remained together until his death in 1999. During her marriage to Kubrick, Christiane concentrated on a career as a painter. In addition to raising Christiane's young daughter Katharina (b. 1953) from her first marriage to the late German actor Werner Bruhns (d. 1977), the couple had two daughters, Anya (b. 1959) and Vivian (b. 1960). Christiane's brother Jan Harlan was Kubrick's executive producer from 1975 onward.
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