1/ I noticed a helicopter shadow in The
Shining, is this a mistake?
"This is probably the single most often-asked and most irritating question to recur
over and over again on alt.movies.kubrick.
The opening titles of
The
Shining
consist of long, dreamlike, sweeping shots of the
Rocky Mountains, as Kubrick explained to Michel Ciment
(1)
: "It was important to establish an
ominous mood during Jack's first drive up to the hotel -- the vast isolation and eerie
splendour of high mountains, and the narrow, winding roads which would become
impassable after heavy snow."
The helicopter footage was filmed by Greg McGillivray and Kubrick was apparently very pleased with his work: "He spent several weeks filming some of the most beautiful mountain helicopter shots I've seen." While the grace and scope of these shots is hypnotic, there is a moment, just before a low fly-by pass of the yellow VW car, where the shadow of the helicopter filming the scene is clearly visible in the lower right hand corner of the picture.
So, why is this such a hot topic on the newsgroup? Kubrick has a reputation as a
perfectionist, and this is something of a very apparent gaffe. It's generated no end of
commentary, mostly facetious, as to why Kubrick had "clearly" left the shot in.
Some say that, if the film was projected through a widescreen gate
(2)
- as it would be in a cinema - the shadow would not be visible, although members of amk have refuted this. For instance Mark Ervin noticed the shadow on
The Shining's
third showing at Mann's Chinese Theater May 23, 1980 and he has "never failed to see it since."
AMK is lucky to have as an occasional contributor Gordon Stainforth. Gordon was an assistant editor on
The Shining
(he took over from Ray Lovejoy when he became ill) he actually cut the title sequence. Here's what he has to say.
"I want to try and put at rest the interminable [helicopter shadow]
debate re. an apparent mistake in The Shining. I cut the title sequence,
so I speak with some authority. I've said quite a lot about this before,
so I hope this really is the last time!
While I did the first cut, it is just possible that Ray Lovejoy made
some alterations to the picture when he was finalising the front titles
and credits - I have a distinct recollection of him asking me for the
trims - but I think not. But I do have a recollection that at one stage
in the movie some of those cuts were going to be dissolves. It is just
possible that when we changed that mix to a straight cut we went back
slightly beyond the centre point of the dissolve to get the absolute
maximum length out of the shot. Musically and emotionally I remember we
needed absolutely every usable frame of that first long shot with the
titles.
OK, some key facts:
Although
The Shining
was shot with the full academy aperture, it was
designed and composed entirely for the 1.85:1 ratio, and that is the
only way it should be projected in the theatre.
All the Steenbecks in the cutting rooms accordingly had their screens
marked, or even masked off, with the 1.85:1 ratio. The 6-plate Steenbeck
in Stanley and Ray's main cutting room was masked off with black masking
tape, because you cannot cut a movie properly unless you can see the
frame exactly as it will appear in the cinema.
However the helicopter shadow IS almost certainly visible for about 4 or 5 frames at the edge of the 1.85:1 masking. But it was NOT visible on any of the correctly marked-up Steenbecks, or in the main viewing theatre at Elstree, at least, not as the first version of the film left Elstree in 1980. I think now that this mistake may have crept in very late during the editing of the movie when the first caption-title 'The Interview' was shortened by 8 frames on 23 April 1980 and the Main Title/credit sequence was lengthened accordingly by 8 frames, since the music could not be shortened. (This information is based on my original cutting room notes)
Every one of the show prints of the first 6 interpositives for the
American release of
The Shining
was personally checked in the viewing
theatre at Elstree by Stanley himself. IF the helicopter shadow was
fleetingly visible, either Stanley did not notice it, or it was so
trivial that it did not bother him.
Unfortunately the masking and racking in many theatres is incredibly
inaccurate. [...] I therefore suspect that people who have seen this "awful" shadow for
any length of time on the cinema screen must have seen it projected at
completely the wrong ratio (probably 1.66/1!), or incredibly badly
racked, or both. Or of course they've seen it on the video, where it's
visible for just over a second!
Incidentally (or not so incidentally!), Stanley was NOT at all bothered
by the vague shadow of the rotors at the top of the frame in the last
shot of the main titles."
The notion that dramas should aim to suspend our disbelief goes right back to
Aristotle's "Poetics," where it was first articulated. However a similar jarring
"mistakes" were deliberately employed as effects by the playwright and drama theorist Bertolt Brecht