'Moon children, polka-dot aliens, suckling ape suits, and many more intergalactic wrong turns ... magnificent.' - Vanity Fair. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was a groundbreaking collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke, combining meticulous scientific research, innovative visual effects, and pioneering filmmaking techniques to create a cinematic masterpiece. Get closer than ever to the movie that changed the movies. This behind-the-scenes spectacular sheds light on the lead actors, senior production designers, special-effects experts and masterminds of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. Kubrick assembled a team of experts to ensure scientific accuracy. Fred Ordway, a space scientist, served as a consultant, while illustrators Roy Carnon and Richard McKenna created concept art influenced by Chesley Bonestell's space illustrations. Detailed pre-production paintings, sketches, and models were developed to visualize spacecraft, lunar bases, and futuristic technology. This comprehensive visual record includes on and off set photographs, pre-production paintings, and conceptual designs from the Kubrick archives. Douglas Trumbull supervised a team of about 200 artists and technicians to create realistic space sequences. Techniques included Front projection for the "Dawn of Man" sequence, blending live-action apes with African landscapes, rotating centrifuge sets built by Vickers-Armstrong Engineering, simulating artificial gravity inside the Discovery One spacecraft and miniature spacecraft models filmed with long exposures to achieve photorealistic realism. These dazzling images offer insight both into Kubrick's meticulous directorial methods, and into the mysteries and magnetism of a film at once vast in scope and intricate in its exploration of our relationship to technology. The making of 2001: A Space Odyssey was a monumental achievement, blending scientific rigor, artistic vision, and technical innovation. Written and researched over several years by the outer space, special effects, and technology journalist Piers Bizony, in collaboration with the Kubrick Estate and Warner Bros, this compendium is an exhaustive labour of love. 16 x 22cm, 512 pages. Otherworldly colour photos throughout. New from Taschen.
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