Well, I kind think that goes without saying. EWS especially.I think Kubrick is all about lighting.
Check out the book of his early still work for LOOK magazine and you're see his love affair with lighting in its infancy.
http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-Kubric.../dp/0714844381
I didn't mean that facetiously. I've seen far fewer Kubrick films than I should have. But there is something distinctive about the lighting in each of them that seems to define the experience. Last night I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey with over-dubbed commentary by Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood. They made several references to the amount of time required to set up each shot, especially the effort made to get the lighting right. For a film so much about deep dark space, it sure was full of light. (And I'm not simply referring to the special effects.)
In all our zeal about formats, lenses, film, developers and so forth, it's easy to forget that photography is about light. It seems an obvious enough thing to say. But the light is the photograph.
They took the road toward Banff in their little VW, but ended up at the lodge on Mt
Hood in Oregon, then into the movie set. And he finally froze to death not in the
snow, but in salt crystals, lying amidst the spray-painted foliage of the maze. Now they would just photoshop him. Glad they didn't.
Total agreement with you Will.
What I've always admired about Kubrick is he's not just a just camera nerd. The whizbang techniques he used were never used solely as a technical exercise. It always served the story. He was equal parts cinematographer and screenwriter. Which also explains how he's one of the few in cinema history who made films that held up to artistic scrutiny but were also accessible to all types of moviegoers and not just the "festival crowd." (i.e. blockbusters)
Perhaps Private Joker (Full Metal Jacket) would call this dichotomy "The Jungian Thing/Duality of Man."
Of course, Drew, not *everyone* has seen this 30-year-old movie yet...ahem...
--Darin
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