Channel 4 painstakingly evokes a Kubrick classic
| by: | Sep 1, 2008 |
In the mythology of film, Stanley Kubrick's reputation for meticulousness has become as legendary as his films 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining are revered. So, in creating a promo that would pay homage to the auteur for the launch of UK digital channel More4's Stanley Kubrick Season, it was fitting that Channel 4's in-house Creative Services team be as exacting as the director himself.
The :60 promo is a single-take shot through various sets of The Shining, with dead ringers of Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd. The spot is especially effective due to the extent to which the team took the look-alike concept.
"We had to be particular. There are so many fans of Kubrick's work that it would be glaringly obvious to everyone if we slipped up or cut corners," says creative manager/director Siri Bunford, now repped for spots through Knucklehead. "We painstakingly and methodically researched."
That research included poring over reference materials such as Taschen Books' The Stanley Kubrick Archives and Kubrick's daughter Vivian's documentary Making The Shining. The detective work assisted the team in tracking down look-alike crew as well as actors, including Kubrick's frequent collaborator, DP John Alcott.
Furthermore, every prop in the promo either came from the original The Shining set, courtesy of Kubrick's personal archives, or was reproduced by the art department down to the tiniest detail.
"[Kubrick] was a very superstitious man," reveals Bunford. "He only liked the color yellow. His script was yellow, and the typewriter he worked on was yellow. We found the real yellow typewriter and put it in the set."
Choosing to recreate The Shining over other films in Kubrick's canon stemmed from Bunford's desire to use the exact equipment Kubrick did.
"[We wanted] to do one single Steadicam shot, no cuts and no wipes," explains Bunford, who shot using one of Kubrick's preferred lenses, a 25mm Cooke. "It became obvious quite quickly that The Shining would be it because it was [one of] the films that pioneered the use of the Steadicam." Indeed, Kubrick worked with the camera mount's inventor, Garrett Brown, extensively on the film.
The promo was shot over two days at Bray Studios outside London, and the set took five days to construct after two to three weeks of pre-production. However, one of the biggest challenges for Bunford and the team was rehearsal - there was virtually no time for any.
"We rehearsed on the morning we shot," says Bunford. "To choreograph all of that in 60 seconds, it had to be extremely precise. There'd be 30 takes of something before we got it right, but in the end we did."
