Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” – Special Effects and Douglas Trumbull

The special-effects team from “2001.” “2001: A Space Odyssey” established new standards for the science fiction film genre. A staff of more than one hundred worked exclusively on the special effects The film hit benchmarks with its realistic spaceship models and the suspension of cameras to create the illusions of weightlessness. “2001” contains 205 separate special-effects shots, and two techniques in particular broke new ground in the industry: the front-projection system and the slit0can procedure. In 1969 Kubrick received an Academy Award for outstanding special-effects, the only Oscar awarded during his lifetime, which he shared with the team.

Douglas Trumbull supervised the special photographic effects on “2001,” designing the slit-scan camera technique, which was used to create the film’s “Star Gate” sequence: a corridor of psychadelic light through which the astronaut Bowman is hurled on his way to the infinite.

Among his many achievements in the field of visual effects are those he earned for Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, one of three career nominations.. He was honored in 2011 with the Gordon E.Sawyer Award, given by the Academy for career achievement in the scientific and engineering field.

Trumbull was born on April 8, 1942, and lives in Massachusetts.