2001 : Stars Gate

Everyone remembers the scene in which David Bowman is sucked into the star gate tunnel.

In 1968, youngsters attracted by this psychodelic scene would light a joint and enjoy the astronaut’s “trip” on the Cinerama screen.

In fact, MGM’s slogan for the movie’s second exclusivity release was « The Ultimate Trip ».

The smoke has dispersed but the images remain stupefying.

We owe this sequence to Douglas Trumbull. In the beginning, he moves the camera from left to right, makes it pivot clockwise and counterclockwise keeping the shutter open, and filming 65mm photograms.

His great idea consisted in moving the camera closer to or away from the drawn background. This creates a fuzziness around the frame and a blurry depth of field.

Kubrick became interested in this procedure and allowed Trumbull to continue experimenting and building his « slit scan ».

Let’s simplify :

An abstract colorful motif is placed on a luminous support.

A narrow slit is cut out of an opaque sheet of paper.

A mobile camera films only one image at a time.

Effect : At the beginning of the filming, the camera captures the precise image of the luminous slit, which keeps getting larger and moving until it disappears from the frame.

The steps are repeated for each of the images shifting the opaque mask : there is a variation of the colors and the position of the luminous slit.

The result is a trail of light around the edges of the screen, creating an illusion of depth.

The trip may begin : To Jupiter and beyond The Infinite !

The Black Box cannot resist the pleasure of showing you these photograms from the tunnel of light.

Please let's watch them to french part called "2001 La porte des étoiles".

(These photograms speak for themselves. Only one comment comes to my mind: the idea for the star boy of the final sequence seems to have been inspired by this scene: Bowman’s eye reflects the worlds he is crossing until he becomes a world of his own, containing the seed of all the possible worlds.)