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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Directed by: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood and William Sylvester

 IMDb page about 2001: A Space Odyssey

Studio(s): Shepperton Studios - MGM Borehamwood

  • MGM Borehamwood: This epic movie has been cited as one of the primary causes behind the closure of MGM British studios because Stanley Kubrick's film occupied more and more of the available studio space - eventually using all of it - for almost two years, thus rendering the facilities massively unprofitable in the long run. The studio closed in 1970.
  • MGM Borehamwood: Dawn of Man sequence was shot on Stage 03 at MGM

    • One of the most iconic sets for MGM-British Borehamwood or any other British studio for that matter, has to be the vast centrifugal interior of the spaceship Discovery from Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Costing a mighty £750,000 and designed by the film’s production designer Tony Masters, the forty-foot diameter ferris wheel like set, was built by Vickers Engineering and was fully rotatable. Sections of the wheel could be removed for easy camera access. For longer shots with a wide angle lens, the camera was mounted on a pole through a narrow slot at the point where the two halves of the wheel met. For some shots, there was no room for a camera operator in the wheel, so the actors had to lean forward to start the camera themselves, then get back into position and start the scene as the wheel started to rotate.

    The enormous set occupied one of nine stages that were utilized for 2001 during its lengthy filming from 1966 through 1968.

    A similar concept was used for the hotel corridor scenes in Inception. 

    Trailer:

    A stunning trailer for a documentary project by Doug Trumbull, which unfortunately has currently been cancelled by Warner Bros.

    Making of a Myth documentary featuring Arthur C. Clarke and James Cameron