İt was 50 years ago that the science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey opened in theaters across the United States. The film, directed by Stanley Kubrick, was based on a book by Arthur C. Clarke. The almost three-hour long movie opened to mixed reviews in 1968. Critics said it was too cerebral and slow to be understood by movie goers. Today the movie is one of the American Film Institute’s top 100 films of all time.

Douglas Trumbull is a movie director. Fifty years ago, he was a special photographic effects supervisor in the 2001 production. He describes Stanley Kubrick as a perfectionist who spent four years making the film.

Trumbull said that Kubrick started out by planning to make the film like other movies, with tensions and excitement building throughout the storyline. But then he began removing all of the usual theatrical elements because he was working on a large 70 millimeter widescreen film.

The movie became “more immersive” and the more experimental it became, the less you had to talk about, Trumbull noted.

To create this experience Kubrick built what Trumbull calls “a centrifuge set -- the big center piece of the movie.”

The cameras were tied on the rotating set and were filming in 360 degrees. This is how Kubrick created the images of the astronauts walking from the floor to the top of the spaceship.

And then there was the music...

2001: A Space Odyssey is remembered for its use of classical music, instead of music specially created for the film.

Aliqismet BADALOV,

“Khalq qazeti”