"A spaceship of the mind": Oliver Rennert's Discovery

You may remember that in several previous posts I talked about Oliver Rennert's exquisitely detailed drawings for Piers Bizony's The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s '2OO1: A Space Odyssey', published by Taschen in July. 

I also told you how Oliver is now selling, on his website, a high-quality Giclée print of his flagship drawing, the Discovery cutaway, as a limited edition of 500 pieces, numbered and signed with certificate of authenticity.

Source: Taschen on Facebook

I had met Oliver at the launch party of The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s '2OO1', chez Kubrick's, and he immediately struck me as a nice and modest guy. By then, although I had admired the amazing quality of his original artworks that were on display there, I was a bit skeptical about how a print could render such hand-made details so faithfully, despite having learned that a Giclée print is high-quality art paper printed with super-fine ink spray dots and it's almost indistinguishable from an actual painting. 

Well, my dear friend Navneet sent me one Discovery print - and boy, is it awesome!

....looks like everything is in its right place!

I therefore realized that others fans, who could be skeptical as well, might be interested in knowing how Oliver got the job, realized those drawings, and how, in the process, managed to live for eleven weeks "inside" one of the most famous fictional spaceships ever. Here's what he told me.

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First of all, how did you get involved in the Taschen project?

I had never worked for Taschen before nor did I know Bizony personally (though I did have a copy of his earlier book on 2OO1, Filming the Future). It all began on an evening here in Cologne, where there was a live production of 2OO1 being staged at the Philharmonic Concert Hall, live meaning that there was a full orchestra and two choirs performing in synch to the film being screened above the musician's heads. My cousin Jan Harlan was also there. After the show we all - my wife Marion, Jan and me - went to dinner. During the lively conversation about the spectacular show we had just seen I showed Jan the Bizony book; did he know about it? Of course he did, and then he let drop the side remark that Taschen were going to do a huge book project about 2OO1, it would be unlike anything anyone had ever seen.

Oliver Rennert and Piers Bizony dedicating copies of The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s '2OO1' during the launch party (photo © Oliver Boito, from Taschen's Facebook page)

2OO1 had always been a landmark experience in my life, and here I suddenly realized that I could, as it were, pay homage to that achievement which was so much part of my formative years. With my background as an illustrator, I could possibly contribute some explanative illustrations to the book should the author and the publisher be agreeable. Furthermore, these illustrations would be the first of their kind for this film, and since I work in the time-honoured media of traditional illustrators these images would seamlessly fit in with anything Taschen would dig up in the Kubrick archives - material on 2OO1 would be at least some forty years old, way before any digital rendering techniques.

Jan thought this a great idea and forwarded me the contact details of Piers Bizony, as well as Florian Kobler at Taschen. I contacted both, and both liked the idea. Bizony was quite enthusiastic after he had seen my website, he thought here was the right man for such a job. I went and spent a week at Piers's house in England, we basically ransacked his image files for anything that could be useful and brainstormed ideas. Three main images emerged, they are the ones that ended up in the book. (the Discovery cutaway, plus two drawings about how front-projection and the slit-scan machine work) Kobler was persuaded to commissioning illustrations after I had shown him a quite-detailed line drawing of the proposed Discovery cutaway illustration - something that he would never have been able to get elsewhere, in this way. So it was all agreed and away I went.

A close-up of Oliver's detailed drawing of the Discovery insides. The real thing looks way better.

I had quite a few other ideas, but they would have involved some gentle creative input of my own that would not have been supported directly by the film material available. These illustrations would have given life to scenes the film doesn't show, but would necessarily have been part of the story. For example, I would have loved to show more detail of the docking of the Orion with the space station, also a cutaway of the station itself would have been lovely. Also a picture showing how the Aries actually docks with the station would have been nice, but all these images have no precedent in the film, and Piers was rightly adamant that the book only deal with actual, certifiable material and not go off on fantasy tangents.

The decision for the three eventual images had its base in that there should be some which explained the pioneering filmmaking techniques, which otherwise would have required lots of text - a typical case of a picture being worth more than a thousand words. The Discovery Cutaway, however, is there because I felt that this spaceship, in and around which so much of the film action happens, is a confusing maze of interior architecture which could do with some summary visual explanation. And I wanted to create something beautiful to look at as well, to go with all the other aesthetic jewels both the film and the book present. Lastly, I wanted to commemorate Harry Lange, who was one of the major designers of the film, and whom I remember, having worked with him myself a long time ago, at EMI Elstree studios, in 1980-81.

One of the other two drawings Oliver realized for Taschen: the front-projection mechanism devised for 2OO1.

How did you make up the interiors of the Discovery? I'm asking this because fans debated for decades about the odd proportions that seem to originate when you consider the various areas of the ship as seen in the movie (i.e. the pod bay and the centrifuge sections are too big to fit the sphere seen from the outside), so I was wondering if you had access to some blueprints or you worked out all by yourself.

This was actually quite tricky and involved some major brainwork. First of all, all the illustrations were done the old-fashioned way: watercolours, inks, airbrush work, coloured pens etc., they weren't created digitally. That was the intention: produce something in 2013 that looks as if it was made in 1965, so that it fits seamlessly with all the visual material that the Kubrick archives provided for Piers Bizony and the Taschen book. The actual design of the Discovery illustration was arrived at after careful weighing and assessing the evidence. I had done complicated cutaways of objects before, and it involves putting yourself at the centre of the object and looking out in a direction from which you could then, when looking in, see as much as possible of the objects elements.

With Discovery, it was obvious that the big ball should be in the foreground, that an above-deck level would be required to see behind the space pods and that there would be no way that I could show the centrifuge, HAL's brain room and the flight deck without somehow moving the last two of these out from the central area. Still, the overall sphere image also needed to be conveyed. This would also get me out of the very real conundrum of the centrifuge, pod bay and flight deck being too large for the available space. For this illustration, it all was a matter of how you look at the various parts in relation to each other in perspective while still also conveying the overall sphere image.

Source: Taschen on Facebook

Thus I arrived at the peeled-orange solution you now see. The long tail was included because on the one hand it is a hallmark of Discovery and should be included in any image of the spaceship, and on the other hand it gave me a tool to allow Taschen to frame the illustration any which way they needed to. Sounds odd, but they had not given me any idea of the book's design. I had no idea what shape the book would be, I had no contact with the designers at M/M Paris. So I suppose Taschen just let me go ahead and run with my ideas. My impression is that Taschen are not a publisher who readily commissions illustrations, they much rather deal with readily available material, and thus they were possibly not used to the communicative traffic between author, illustrator and designer that usually accompanies the creative process of a production in the way I know it. They would somehow accommodate my illustration in their design.

The technical detail was worked out pretty much between Piers and myself. I had borrowed a copy of Fred Ordway's book 2OO1: The Lost Science from Piers. He also let me have some archive imagery and blueprints and I had Piers' book. And, of course, I also had a DVD of the film. In the end, it all came together without too much creative coercion. There were numerous sketches and perspective drafts until the right viewing angle and amounts of foreshortening emerged. I watched the film umpteen times, looking first for one specific detail here, then another there. It felt like living aboard the ship at times. Of course, in the end you can stretch physics only to a certain degree: there had to be the odd bit of illustrative magic applied occasionally, but in such subtle amounts that it doesn't show up noticeably in the result at all. After all, Discovery is a spaceship of the mind, the real ship only existed in several disjointed film sets. The fact that it all went together as well as it did is another credit to the original designers and hard working crew that made it all possible. Overall, the illustration took 11 weeks to complete, working pretty much seven days a week.

Oliver showing his job to other guests at the launch party. Source: Taschen on Facebook

I was told that there is the chance that an annotated version could be produced as well - where the various parts of Discovery are captioned with leader lines, like a stylish technical drawing...

To answer that I need to go back a little: I am no digital artist and have to rely on the services of the very professional folks at my printer's. Giclée prints are expensive and difficult to produce in any quality worth truly looking at, and this one is a cream-of-the-crop example. To give you an idea: where regular prints are set up to be printed at 330 dpi, Discovery gets the full 2880 dpi treatment in order to produce the nice, velvet darkest-blue backdrop. We do what is necessary. To get to where the file is now I had to spend a lot of time with a Photoshop pro to clean up the original scan data. Taschen's file is very good already, but it is geared at book print production, and the result in the book is less than half of the size the actual artwork. My prints, however, are same size to the original, every tiny little flaw would be visible, and I wanted to present a perfect image. That is why we went back to the original scan data from the illustration.

After all was done and I was ready to sell the first prints I had run up a massive bill. Putting captions and leader lines on the image file would involve additional expenditure. I figured I hold off on this until my Photoshop bill has been paid by sufficient "pure" prints having been sold. 2OO1 imagery of this nature is for a probably very limited market only: it is expensive to make and it is delicate to handle. Also, forty-something years after the film's release the 2OO1 fan base would be quite small now. Only true aficionados really are prepared to pay the money I ask for Discovery Cutaway. But may it be known here that most of the money actually goes towards production and shipping, my profit is very limited indeed. So I have to be patient and wait for more orders to roll in before I can afford further expense on this project. I am confident, though, that eventually a break-even point is reached, and when it is I'll go for the annotated version.

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In conclusion: for us 2OO1 fans the Discovery is, after all, more than a fictional spaceship - it's a real machine that actually flew to Jupiter. And she belonged to our dreams for so long that it's almost unreal that, finally, an artist devoted his skills to expose - respectfully - her inner beauty for the first time. Because, after all, "machines are so sexy", as Stanley Kubrick said once!

Give yourself a little treat, contact Oliver through his website. The prints are still available, and if the Discovery is the spaceship of your dreams, you won't regret it.

Kubrick, George Best e la Coppa del Mondo del '66

Stanley Kubrick si trovò di certo di fronte ad una lunga serie di ostacoli durante la realizzazione di 2OO1 - organizzativi, tecnici, economici... Ma chi se lo immaginava che sul suo percorso si fosse andata a piazzare anche la finale dei Mondiali di calcio del 1966?

fonte: catalogo della mostra "Stanley Kubrick", ed.tedesca, p.281

La storia che segue è solo un esempio di quello che potrete trovare nel clamoroso libro della Taschen The Making of Stanley Kubrick's 2OO1, uscito in edizione limitata il mese scorso e subito esaurito. E' però ancora disponibile un'altra versione, sebbene costosetta, che include anche una litografia autografa dell'artista Brian Sanders, quindi chi è interessato può ordinarlo dal sito medesimo o dai distributori italiani di libri.it.

Nel 1966 l'Inghilterra era la nazione organizzatrice dell'Ottava edizione della Coppa del Mondo di Calcio, che si tenne dall'11 al 30 Luglio. Tutte le partite dell'Inghilterra vennero giocate nel mitico stadio di Wembley; solo 15 chilometri più a nord, negli studi MGM di Borehamwood, stavano per concludersi le riprese live action (ovvero con attori) delle sequenze "spaziali" di 2OO1. La sezione "L'Alba dell'Uomo" era ancora in fase di studio e sarebbe stata girata solo nell'agosto-settembre 1967, e la troupe si era messa al lavoro sulle sequenze degli effetti speciali.

Tali riprese richiesero una quantità senza precedenti di prove e sperimentazioni e durarono più di 18 mesi, principalmente poiché Kubrick era deciso ad un approccio "senza compromessi" per quanto riguardava l'aspetto dei modellini, in modo da rompere con il look non abbastanza verosimile che questi avevano finora avuto nel cinema di fantascienza. Il regista decise di esplorare ogni strada possibile, tra il tentativo di migliorare le tecniche di ripresa pre-esistenti e lo sviluppo di nuove metodologie.

Questo sforzo portò, per esempio, alla costruzione di un modello della Discovery lungo 16 metri (probabilmente ancor'oggi il modello di una nave spaziale più grande mai costruito per un film). Sarebbe stato impossibile, come si faceva usualmente, muovere il modellino attorno alla cinepresa: in questo caso era questa a muoversi attorno al modello, lungo una rotaia di una cinquantina di metri, per mezzo di un massiccio meccanismo a ruota dentata importato apposta da una fabbrica automobilistica di Detroit. Utilizzando questo meccanismo di precisione, facendo muovere lentissimamente la cinepresa ed impressionando solo pochi frame al secondo, con un'apertura ridottissima dell'obiettivo della macchina da presa, la squadra di effetti speciali capeggiata da Wally Veevers riuscì a ottenere una profondità di campo tale da avere la lunghissima Discovery a fuoco e nitidissima da un capo all'altro. Tale processo era talmente lento che venne descritto da Kubrick "come fissare la lancetta delle ore di un orologio".

Una rara immagine della Discovery lunga 16 metri. Kubrick aveva vietato di proposito fotografie di questo innovativo "modellone". Fonte: douglastrumbull.com

Lo stesso lentissimo metodo venne usato per girare la splendida sequenza in cui la stazione spaziale ruota attorno al proprio asse, con stupenda ed inarrivabile fluidità, nella scena in cui Floyd la raggiunge a bordo dell'Orion. Poiché per ottenere pochi minuti di filmato utile bisognava far muovere la macchina da presa per ore, non era ovviamente possibile accorgersi di problemi nel movimento dei modellini (per esempio oscillazioni o movimenti imprevisti degli stessi o della macchina da presa) se non dopo aver sviluppato la pellicola, cosa che a volte avveniva molto tempo dopo, e obbligava il già esausto team di effetti speciali a rigirare la scena.

Un giorno, controllando queste riprese risalenti a qualche settimana prima, Kubrick si accorse di un tremore evidente ed improvviso della stazione spaziale, che era sembrata letteralmente "sbandare da un lato all'altro dello schermo". Una veloce ricerca nei diari di produzione rivelò che quella particolare ripresa era stata effettuata nel pomeriggio del 30 Luglio. Cos'era successo?

Il modello della stazione spaziale aveva il diametro di quasi tre metri. Fonte: douglastrumbull.com

Molto semplicemente, la sequenza era stata girata esattamente durante la finale della Coppa del Mondo tra Inghilterra e Germania Ovest. Molti membri dello staff erano venuti a lavorare quel giorno solo a condizione di poter piazzare un televisore negli studi, in modo da poter dare un'occhiata di tanto in tanto...  Allo stesso tempo, nello studio di ripresa di fianco, il modello della stazione spaziale ruotava lentamente, ripreso al ritmo di un fotogramma ogni sei secondi - e per soli diciotto secondi, vale a dire tre fotogrammi, a metà strada del girato, il pavimento aveva tremato. Verso le 17, tutti avevano saltato di gioia all'unisono - Geoff Hurst aveva segnato il gol vincente dell'Inghilterra!

Geoff Hurst segna il gol vincente della finale dei Mondiali: risultato finale, Inghilterra 4 Germania Ovest 2.

Il capitano inglese Bobby Moore con la Coppa Rimet (il trofeo che veniva assegnato all'epoca ai Campioni del Mondo, poi rimpiazzato dal 1974 dalla Coppa FIFA)

Nonostante la Coppa del Mondo avesse interferito con la realizzazione del suo capolavoro, Kubrick non se ne ebbe troppo a male. Sì, continuava a restare un newyorkese, tanto da farsi spedire videocassette di football americano da sua sorella rimasta negli USA, e in seguito - con l'arrivo dell'epoca delle pay-tv - gli piaceva gustarsi i playoff dell'NFL. Ma, come residente in Inghilterra da metà degli anni '60, era anche diventato capace di apprezzare il nostro calcio, e amava chiacchierarne con amici come il suo attore e futuro assistente Leon Vitali.

Citando di nuovo la figlia Katharina,

Mi ricordo che gli piaceva la squadra in cui giocava George Best - era il Manchester United? Era un grande fan di George Best. Ma non credo fosse "tifoso" di qualche squadra in particolare. Credo guardasse una partita quando le squadre giocavano bene, quando era un bello spettacolo da vedere - alcune partite sono noiose, e altre invece hanno giocatori interessanti.

Source: georgebest.com

E quel bellissimo modello della stazione spaziale? Sopravvissuto al "terremoto" causato dalla Coppa del Mondo, qualche anno dopo fu caricato per errore da una ditta incaricata di trasferire i magazzini della MGM e trasportato in una discarica lì vicino. Uno studente locale fece in tempo a scattare qualche foto, ma essendo in Vespa non riuscì a portarsi via niente - quando tornò con un mezzo più adeguato il tutto era già stato sfasciato da ignoti ragazzini del posto.

History in the making: Kubrick & the 1966 World Cup

Stanley Kubrick had to overcome several obstacles in order to get his space vision right in 2001. But who would have thought that one of such annoyances was the 1966 World Cup Final itself?

Source: Stanley Kubrick exhibition catalogue, p.281

The following story is only one of the many recounted in the majestic Taschen's book The Making of Stanley Kubrick's 2001, that sold out almost immediately in its limited 500€ edition. The even more limited 1.000€ version, including a signed print by 2001 art advisor Brian Sanders is still available, so hurry up and head to Taschen's web site.

the official poster of the 1966 World Cup

In 1966 England hosted the 8th FIFA World Cup, that kicked off on July, 11 with the England-Uruguay game at Wembley. By that time, the shooting of the live action sequences set in space were almost finished (the "dawn of men" section was still being planned and ended up being shot in august-september 1967), and the 2001 crew was working hard to get the special effects shots done right. This required an unprecedented amount of testing and experimentation that lasted more that 18 months, both improving old techniques and developing new methods of shooting spaceships in a "believable" way, as Kubrick was committed to a level of smooth movement and pristine look of the models previously unseen in science fiction movies.

Such commitment led to the building of the largest spaceship models ever built, such as a 54-foot model of Discovery, that was obviously impossible to move around a camera - it was the camera that moved, very slowly, around it, activated by a massive worm gear imported from a Detroit automobile plant, on a mini-railway 150 feet long. By shooting only several seconds per frame, the special effects team was able to obtain the deep-focus photography that made the model look, on the screen, pin-sharp from one end to the other. The excruciating slowness of the process was described by Kubrick himself as "like watching the hour hand of a clock".

A rare picture of the 54-feet model of the Discovery. Kubrick banned any casual photography of the larger model. Source: douglastrumbull.com

The same method was used to shoot the beautiful space-station model that, on screen, rotates so swiftly and majestically above Earth. Because of the time required to get a few seconds of footage, occasional wobbling movements of the models couldn't be spotted on the fly, and were detected only after the film was processed, sometimes weeks later - causing the frustrated fx crew to go back and shoot the sequence all over again.

One day, checking the dailies, a particularly shaky movement of the space station showed up on screen. The station suddenly seemed to "lurch from one side of the screen to another". A search in the log sheets revealed that the event took place during a long exposure sequence in the afternoon of July 30, 1966. What had happened?

The 8-feet model of the space station. Source: douglastrumbull.com

Quite simply, that sequence happened to be shot in the very day when, only 10 miles away from the MGM Borehamwood studios, England and West Germany took the field to play the World Cup final in Wembley. Yes, the greatest moment in English football history happened during the shooting of one of the greatest movies ever.

"Kubrick now remembered that many of his staffers hadn't been willing to work that day unless they could wheel a TV set into the shooting studio and look at it from time to time. [...] in the same instant, they'd all leaped up to applaud England's winning goal. Meanwhile, on its reinforced shooting stage, the space station had been turning gently for three hours, while the camera snapped doggedly away at six seconds per frame, for 1500 frames, enough to generate about a minute's worth of footage. And of for three frames somewhere about halfway through that 1500, the studio floor had shaken". (Taschen's "The Making of Stanley Kubrick's 2001", pp.178-9)

Geoff Hurst's winning goal in the 1966 World Cup Final. Final result: England 4, West Germany 2.

 The iconic picture of Bobby Moore, England's captain, in triumph with the FIFA World Cup original prize, awarded until 1970: the Jules Rimet trophy.

Despite the fact that the World Cup interfered slightly with the shooting of his masterpiece, Kubrick wasn't one of those american "soccer haters" at all. Yes, he was "a nice boy from the Bronx" as he was described by Craig McGregor, and as such he enjoyed watching the videos of american football games that his sister used to send him. But, as he had lived in England since the mid 60's, he also liked "our" football, and loved to talk about it with friends like his former actor and then assistant Leon Vitali.

Here's Katharina Kubrick, his eldest daughter, from an old alt.movies.kubrick message:

I do remember him liking the team that George Best played for - er, Manchester United was it? He was a big G. Best fan. But I don't think that he "supported" any team in particular. I think he watched a game on it's own merits, some are good entertainment and exciting and full of tension and some games are boring, and some teams have interesting players.

Source: georgebest.com

And that beautiful space station model? It survived the World Cup Quake, but a few years later it ended up in the entrance way of the local corporation dump in Stevenage - it was later smashed up by kids. The whole (sad) story is available here.

Buone Vacanze (Happy Holidays)!

Before the well-deserved summer break, a quick update on everything 2001-related around the web.

Oliver Rennert created this beautiful Discovery I cutaway illustration for The Making of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (now due late July - early August). Now he is selling a high-quality reproduction as a limited edition of 500 pieces, numbered and signed with certificate of authenticity. It is a Giclée print - almost indistinguishable from an actual painting in three primary sizes (note: dimensions include a 3cm border).
- A1 size: 59,4cm x 80,1cm total dimensions, 86.5% of original size. 270 Euros, without shipping cost
- Original: 70cm x 98cm total dimensions, 100% of original size. 300 Euros, without shipping cost
- XL size: 116cm x 76cm total dimensions, 109% of original size. 350 Euros, without shipping cost
Price may be on the high side, but it is a limited edition and of high quality. For other sizes, please contact Oliver through his website below (contact page). Note that anything below A2 or higher than the XL will either not show enough detail or render 'imperfections'.

To purchase it, contact Oliver Rennert here.

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More great pictures from the forthcoming Taschen's Making of Stanley Kubrick's 2001 has been published on the Vanity Fair website. Here's one, an early production sketch showing the mysterious alien artifact on the moon. The pyramid design (reminiscent of the tetrahedron featured in Arthur C. Clarke's The Sentinel) was discarded for being too evocative of ancient Egypt and thus not sufficiently alien. Check out the other pics here.

(© 2014 Stanley Kubrick Archives/Taschen; Turner Entertainment Co.)

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Check out the great 2001-related interviews my friend Justin Bozung has been posting on TV Store Online's Blog: Ivor Powell (part 1 and 2), Lydia Wilen, Jill Caras.

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We mourn the late Frederick Ordway III, scientific consultant to 2001, who passed away on July 1, aged 87. He deserves a larger, greater post - and not only for his contribution to our favourite movie; in the meantime, check out the obituaries by New York Times and Washington Post.

Mr.Ordway in the Borehamwood studios during the shooting of 2001 (Source)

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The Apollo 11 Moon Landing happened 45 years ago, on July 21, 1969. Here it is, recut to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: Space Odyssey from Nick Acosta on Vimeo.

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Some quick links to visit while suntanning on the beach:

• 2001italia su Tumblr
• 2001italia su Facebook
• 2001italia su Twitter
• 2001: A Space Odyssey Group on Facebook

And one last thing before I go: the BEST 2001-related image archive on the Net, Dave Harmon's 2001archive (https://www.flickr.com/photos/2001archive/sets/). You'll spend the whole summer browsing it. Enjoy!

The making of 'The Making of': Piers Bizony's odyssey

Piers Bizony, space historian and science writer, is the author of The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s '2OO1: A Space Odyssey', a book that you may have already heard of. After the launch party at Kubrick's Childwickbury Manor he very graciously accepted to answer my questions about the book.

Piers, rightfully proud, poses for me with the book during the launch party

Piers, in 1994 and 2000 you published two editions of '2001: Filming the Future', a groundbreaking book in its extended, in-depth look at the making of '2001'. When and how did the new 'Making of' originated? In other words, who (or what) brought you back into The Odyssey?

I always knew that the first books were really very small, and that a great deal more material had to exist somewhere. Stanley Kubrick had given me permission to write and publish those first paperbacks, and had apologized to me that he was too busy (on A.I. and then Eyes Wide Shut) to offer much practical help. I was very dismayed when he died in 1999 at the not spectacularly great age of 70. However, as another decade passed, I began to talk more with Christiane his wife, and Jan Harlan, his brother in law, about maybe reviving the 2001 book in a new and enlarged format. They were actually very enthusiastic, so that’s how this latest project began.

You started your professional life as a photographer. Was this choice somehow influenced by your moviegoer experience, maybe by the very same '2001' - I’m thinking about its pristine look and impeccable photography?

Absolutely! As a kid you come reeling out of that film wanting to be the person who makes things like that happen. You rush off and get a silly little camera and start snapping away. You start making drawings of fabulous interplanetary spaceships and so on. Then, as you get older, you are also inspired to read more seriously about science and philosophy, and learn about optical effects and cosmology . . . 2001 opens up the imagination in so many ways: artistically, technically and philosophically.

'Filming the Future' was your first book. Which role did it play in the decision of quitting photography and become a full-time writer?

I had been working on the book part-time while getting on with other professional projects. You will find that most people’s first books are essentially created during spurts of available time in between other more urgent rent-paying work. I had a very good editor at Aurum Press - Sheila Murphy - and she went a long way towards convincing me that I could be a writer. However, I also did the layout and so on, using a very early Apple computer and a new piece of software called Quark Xpress . . . It was a fairly simple layout, but at least I had total creative control - another area where Sheila seemed willing to trust me. So this was a great introduction to the book world. We all need a supportive publisher from time to time, helping us to get on the road.

Bizony and Oliver Rennert (author of several artworks for the book) dedicating copies of The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s '2OO1: A Space Odyssey' during the launch party (© Oliver Boito, from Taschen's Facebook page)

You worked with major publishers before, but as far as I know it's the first time you work with Taschen. What was it like? Can you tell us about the 'Taschen difference'?

Jan and Christiane were keen on Taschen because of its earlier success with The Stanley Kubrick Archives. However, Jan was keen to stress that the family had been quite picky about what was published in that book. They had wanted to keep lots of material in reserve for other projects. So there was still masses of unpublished material available in Stanley’s personal archives that had not been published.

My initial worry was that Taschen is a huge international brand, and I might just get “lost in the system” working with them. In fact, my editor there, Florian Kobler, was a very collaborative person and always very easy to reach by email or phone. He and I were the nexus of a large team, some based at Taschen in Cologne, others at M/M design company in Paris, and others (scan companies, archivists, photo digital retouchers, special illustrators) brought in on a case-by-case basis to solve particular problems. This was a massively complex project in technical terms. This is one of the reasons why the book might seem expensive at first, unless you appreciate all the circumstances of its production. There were many heavy costs involved in the image preparation, quite apart from Taschen's desire to make the book itself - and its packaging and binding and presentation - truly special. Plus we had specially commissioned artwork from Oliver Rennert and Wayne Haag, and specially prepared prints from Brian Sanders (who, by the way, has recently been making publicity artwork for the fabulous Mad men Tv series).

Although we can be hugely grateful that so much of Stanley’s archive has survived, even so, these materials for 2001 are essentially half a century old. A massive effort of colour correction, scratch and dust removal and digital scanning was needed. I have lost count of the dusty, scratchy, blurry images of 2001 that I have seen on the web. Most of these are second or third-generation copies of old images. In our case, we were able to go direct to original photos, transparencies and negatives held for safekeeping by University of the Arts, London (UAL) on the Kubrick family’s behalf. I should say, that relationship too involved a certain amount of bureaucracy and negotiation, but UAL was fantastically supportive throughout. It’s just that when you are dealing with any university system, things have to be done a certain way.

The final product is composed by four distinct volumes. Were you in charge of all four of them? 

I would say it is a matter of degree. I was intensely involved in the main “Making Of” volume, swapping pdf notes with M/M designers, and with Taschen’s production department, pretty much every day over the last four or five months leading to print-ready files. I had a direct involvement in almost every page of layout, even though M/M and Taschen had last say on overall design style and layouts, of course. That was a very close and very constructive and cordial working relationship. Sometimes M/M and I would have lively discussions, but everything was always resolved quickly and to the benefit of the project. We all trusted each other's judgements in the end.

It was my idea to include the production notes. Some pages are very brief, but others get very interesting and detailed, especially when talking about the huge space station set and of course, the complicated centrifuge. I also wanted to include the original Journey Beyond the Stars treatment that was submitted to MGM as a sales pitch for the film, because this is different in so many ways from any materials published before, and of course, it’s very different from how the film turned out. At first, for instance, there isn’t even a machine called Hal. The film frames for the fourth volume were provided by Warner Bros., and probably this is the element of the project in which I had almost no direct involvement. Other than that - well, I try to be closely involved with any project that has my name on it.

Checking if everything is all right, being careful not to get too close with that glass.

What where the most challenging parts of such an enormous project?

I made a lot of interviews in the year 2000 for a film about how 2001 was made. It was transmitted on the UK TV Channel 4, and also has ended up on the Warner Bros. Blu-ray disc of 2001. When you make a documentary, each interviewee speaks for maybe five minutes on film, but of course you originally obtain maybe an hour or two hours' worth on camera, which you edit down later. The transcripts to so many fantastic interviews were enough to justify a book rather than just a single TV documentary. That was the easy part of this latest book project.

The hard part, most surely, was the negotiations that I had to undertake with four different entities: The Kubrick family, Taschen, UAL and of course, Warner Bros., who own the basic rights to the film, and are also the actual physical owners of the film itself. On top of this I also dealt with other private archives, seeking permits to use materials. There was a stack of contract documents on my desk, and I had to make sure that none of them clashed with each other - for instance, Taschen wanted maybe a 15 year license period to sell the book, while Warner Bros. had a standard five-year term, and so on. You pick your way through these things (which can really drop you in a mess if you get them wrong) and persuade everyone to reach a sensible compromise.

There were days when I thought the whole project was so complicated I just wanted to give up! On the other hand, nursing it “through the system” did give me a sense of achievement. And I have to stress, all parties were incredibly open to making deals that would allow the book to happen. Everyone wanted to see it made. It’s no one’s fault that the movie world and the book world speak different languages. It was just a question of knowing this in advance, and anticipating and avoiding any misunderstandings. The end result was a fantastically smooth and amicable relationship between all parties. Warner Bros. was very supportive, and I even had an email hotline to their top lawyers.

Tell us more about the images that appear in the making-of book. It's the first time that I see many of them, and even those who surfaced on the net before never looked so beautiful. Did they underwent a restoration process?

Yes - hundreds of hours of cleaning up. Photoshop and similar tools are fabulous for this kind of work, but we had to take a conservator’s approach. A complete set of unretouched scans is held at the UAL. They are a backup so that future digital restorers can perhaps make their own versions of cleaned up and colour corrected images. On these backups you can still see all the tiny scratches, the stuck-down hairs, the thumbprints and so on. It’s just a fact of life that old film materials get pretty scratchy even when they have been kept carefully for 50 years. And of course they had suffered a lot of handling back in the 1960s, because that’s when they were being used, either for technical reference or for publicity. Even so, most of the materials were in amazingly good condition.

I’m interested in learning if, or at what extent, the factor of the book dictated the content. In order to fit in the monolith-like packaging, the 'making-of' volume is unusually vertical...

It was M/M in Paris who went for the monolith shape, simply because this is the wrong shape for a book, but the right shape for this project. I thought it was crazy because of all the folds we would need in order to include some of the very big, very wide illustrations. In fact it makes the exploration of this book more fun for the reader, who must investigate it as carefully as if he or she were dissecting some alien artifact for scientific clues ...

The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s '2OO1: A Space Odyssey' : four books in one (© Espace & Exploration, from their Facebook page)

What about the film stills in the other volume? It must have been an hard time choosing which particular scene to include!

Not too hard. Stick a pin in any part of the film and the frame will be great.

What was the most interesting, or fun, new thing you discovered about '2001' while researching for the book?

Every time I went to the UAL archives I would find something that made me jump up with excitement. Richard Daniels and Sarah Mahurter - the very professional and well-organized people in charge there - got used to this. One example: there were some small brown envelopes with Polaroid prints stuck on the outside. Inside were smaller lint-free envelopes containing clean, crisp, large format negatives. In those days some Polaroid film types could deliver printable and enlargeable negatives as well as positives. Some of the bigger lighting reference shots of the spacecraft models came from these negatives, which could be printed up the size of posters if anyone wanted. So, that was exciting. Then the notes swapped between Arthur and Stanley were really great - like eavesdropping day by day on their discussions. Each visit to the archive was a new excitement, along with lots of painstaking note-taking, scan ordering and so forth.

Such a work transcends its nature of a simple 'job assignment' - it's quite obviously a labour of love. Now that you can see the final product, what is the single part/aspect of the book you're most proud of?

Certainly this wasn’t a “job assignment”. This is a Taschen book without any doubt, but the essential idea, and the ambition for initiating the project, was mine, in partnership with Jan Harlan, with Christiane looking over our shoulders, so to speak, making sure that Stanley's work was being properly represented. I like to make things happen and to bring projects into the world, for sure. But you do need to persuade other people that it’s the right thing to do, especially when you are asking them to spend their money on expensive productions. No one but Taschen, I think, could have done such a great job producing this unique book.

There is a classic line from George Lucas (who, actually, paraphrased Leonardo Da Vinci): “Great movies are not finished, just abandoned". Is there something that, if you have had more time, would have ended up in the book? If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything?

I was very thorough when investigating the archives but in retrospect I did not pay enough attention to black and white contact sheets that had no negatives attached. I just assumed we would not be able to blow any of them up if we didn’t have the actual film strips. One or two contact sheets perhaps I could have just reproduced in their entirety, just at their normal small scale.

In the preface of Filming the future you recalled your first viewing of '2001' in 1968 - at the age of nine, in rural Sussex. I guess many of us experienced the same feelings while watching '2001' for the first time: awe, confusion, excitement... however, how did your relationship with the movie change, from your unique perspective, in the years that passed? After all, it's now reasonable to assume that you spent more time researching 2001 than Kubrick himself did...

Well, it wasn't just Kubrick but a whole production team, so they got through a lot of research back then! But as an individual, researching the film all these years later, certainly I have tried my best not to make too many historical errors, although of course, sometimes you hear many different versions of certain stories from veterans of the production. Every time I see the film, I see new things. I never tire of it. I know I am not alone. Thousands of creative people around the world consider 2001 as a touchstone for their imaginations. Tom Hanks never tires of it, nor does Jim Cameron . . .

Why, in your opinion, is this movie still significant in 2014 - in a world that seem to have forgotten the achievements of the space age and in a movie landscape apparently only focused on teenage-oriented superhero movies?

Let’s face it, 2001 is never going to be the huge mass-market phenomenon today that it was back in the 1960s. But intelligent, thoughtful people will always be found who will respond to the film. Even if people don’t like every aspect of it, 2001 is a part of history now. Everyone’s heard of it, at least. Everyone knows that it is the “daddy” of modern science fiction cinema.

In four years (2018) we will reach the 50th anniversary of the release of the film. May we expect another book looking at the enduring impact of 2001, half a century on, or is your Odyssey over? (a fun - possibly - way to ask what are your next professional projects?)

I think this Taschen project really is the last word from me - I can’t imagine that there is any more great material to be discovered. Sir Christopher Frayling is making a book about Harry Lange’s contributions to 2001. I certainly used some Lange sketches, but because our Taschen book is so biased towards big colour images, I did not want to use too many of Harry’s pencil sketches. I will be very glad to see Chris’s book later this year. Taschen sees his book as complementary, not competitive. When the Lange book comes out, I really think that fans of 2001 will have seen pretty much all there is to see - unless they want to dive into shooting reports, film stock tests, cast list phone numbers, fabric swatch samples . . . at which point, we get from the sensibly celebratory to the insanely obsessive. One of the tasks of a professional book writer and creator is to weed out the too-specific details and concentrate instead on good, visually and narratively exciting examples of such materials that give a general impression of what it took to make 2001, but without boring readers with too much information.

Let's see how the book performs, and what fans think of it. I have to await their judgement. I have really, really tried my best to make a great book. That's honestly all I can say. In the meantime I look forward to working on something else for a while!

* * *

I covered the launch party at Kubrick's Childwickbury Manor here - on the top of that article you'll find many links with official photos and videos. If you want to know more about Piers, here's a couple of old interviews, his lecture at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and another lecture on Yuri Gagarin. You'll find most of his books on Amazon (I've read and found particularly interesting the biography of James Webb, NASA's administrator in the Apollo years).

(Special thanks to Navneet Bhamra for his help with the questions 

and for the picture of yours truly with The Book)