Hacker News Reader

Comment by corysama | Hacker News Reader

In the movie 2001, the computers feature flat screen displays because they were actually displaying rear projection film. This accidentally gave it a more futuristic look than later sci-fi’s such as Alien and Blade Runner which featured bulbous CRT computer screens.

Also, like in OP’s tweets, there were no actual computers involved in the production of 2001. All of the displayed 3D wireframe models were films of physical wireframe models.

View on HN

I suspect the dated-even-for-the-time computers in Alien and Bladerunner were a deliberate choice. For example the painfully slow screen updates in Alien must have been a deliberate choice, monitors of the time were fully capable of near-instantly displaying a screen of text.

It seems likely to me that they wanted to give an impression of a low-budget operation using antiquated tech. The Nostromo is a bulk cargo carrier crewed by little more than space truckers, it wouldn't have the swanky latest tech of the time, but how do you portray that? You can't try to portray people using 2050s tech in a film set in 2100, say, and expect people to get that it's supposed to be crappy old gear.

The effects in 2001 are breathtaking. Have you ever watched all the windows in the spaceships and stations? They aren't just white matte fakeouts, but actual filmsets with extras moving around overlaid with the model work. Building these sets, filming the inserts from the right angles and compositing that onto the final film in a purely optical process took an enormous amount of labor. I wonder why noone ever talks about that.

There’s a scene in a cockpit that was filmed with rear-projected computer screens and black windshields. That film was stored and later re-exposed filming a miniature moon landscape filmed through the windshield of a miniature black cockpit viewing a miniature moon base with black windows. That film was stored again then re-exposed to film people walking around through the windows of a full-sized black moon base.

The worst part of it: this is chemical film. Copying degrades image quality. So you want to do every step on a the same strip of film. But make one single mistake and you'll have to redo everything from scratch. Digital compositing is a godsend compared to that process.

I watched 2001 in 4K UHD Bluray the other day, and the special effects hold up very nicely.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com