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By Solvig Choi on

Stanley Kubrick: The technology behind the art

CPD PhD student Solvig looks into the tech used by a great auteur to make films—and the examples of the kit in our collection.

The Science Museum Collection is made up of over seven million objects, and often they don’t come conveniently grouped—research needs to be done to find objects that connect with each other. For the 25th anniversary of the release of Eyes Wide Shut in Britain on 10 September 1999, I looked at the technology Stanley Kubrick used to make his films.

While most people are familiar with Kubrick, the tools he used to create his masterpieces are less well-known. Kubrick was a gear junkie; he had grown up with his own still cameras and used them in his work as a photojournalist. Although it is more common for film productions to rent equipment, Kubrick preferred to own his own. Kubrick followed a tradition that grew from the earliest camera operators who worked with the inventors and manufacturers of each individual film camera to make adjustments and fine tune their equipment.

Kubrick’s background as a photographer taught him how to combine cameras and lenses to achieve specific effects. Two of the most famous techniques used by Kubrick—zoom shots and filming natural light—were made possible by the combinations he chose.

Mitchell cameras and Cooke lenses have been a staple of the film industry since the early 1920s. However, Kubrick made unusual pairings and customised his Mitchell camera to fit specific lenses.

Mitchell NC 35mm camera with 1000′ magazine and control box.

Lenses used to capture the low natural light that won John Alcott an Oscar for cinematography needed to be extremely ‘fast’—they needed to have a low f number or very wide aperture to let in as much light as possible through to the film when the shutter opened. To achieve this, Kubrick contacted NASA to find out about the lenses they had used to film the dark side of the moon. He bought three out of only ten lenses Zeiss produced of this type. The lens could not be fitted directly to the Mitchell camera and Kubrick worked with camera engineer Ed DiGuilio at Cinema Products Corporation to modify his camera to fit the lens.

Zoom shots are another key feature in Kubrick’s work. According to Cooke, “Stanley Kubrick employed thirty six zoom shots in Barry Lyndon… utilising the 20-100mm on this shoot”. These lenses enabled Kubrick to zoom out onto the whole scene, capturing both the emotion of the individual and situating it in the context of the scene. This is especially noticeable in the ballroom scene at the start of Eyes Wide Shut.

Camera lens and black drawstring pouch
Lens for 35mm cine camera, made in West Germany, of the type used by Stanley Kubrick.

A Clockwork Orange is infamous for its violence as well as the beauty of its shot composition, and some of the lenses that made this possible contained the radioactive compound thorium. The thorium helped to capture different wavelengths of light on film. We have a number of these lenses from Thames Television and the BBC, as they were also used extensively. However, today these lenses have to be carefully stored in special cages.

In tandem with the Cooke lens, Kubrick used his Arriflex IIc. He held the camera to shoot the boxing scene at the start of Barry Lyndon and scenes in A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick used this handheld technique to be as close as possible to the actors and the action.

Black handheld cine camera
Arriflex llC 35mm cine camera with 400′ film magazine.

One of the Arriflex IIc cameras in our collection was found in the barn of a 15th-century farmhouse and is believed to have been in the personal collection of Basil Dean, who developed Ealing Studios.

Kubrick was also one of the first users of Steadicam stabiliser mounts that were produced by Cinema Products Corporation in 1975.

Black body brace for a camera operator
Steadicam brace

Although Stanley Kubrick was born in New York, he spent the last 38 years of his life at Childwickbury Manor in Hertfordshire, which became the centre of his film production empire. Eyes Wide Shut was entirely shot in England winning a Guinness World Record for the longest recorded film shoot.

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