On Friday I visited the Stanley Kubrick exhibition at the London Design Museum. I was very excited as Kubrick is one of the reasons that I wanted to make films in the first place (shortlist of influences: Blade Runner, A Clockwork Orange, the making of featurettes on the the Star Wars Episode I DVD).

The exhibition begins with a video wall to highlight Kubrick’s use of centre compositions.

The following gallery focuses on Kubrick’s development process, and tools.

I found the roughness of Kubrick’s hand drawn storyboards really interesting, it was purely about communicating part of an idea to someone, good storyboards just need to communicate framing information.

It was fascinating to see the development process happening on the page, for me this was the biggest take away from the exhibition, the collaborative developmental process. Kubrick is often put forward as one of the examples of Auteur Theory…

From a technical perspective, Kubrick’s photography experience was a huge influence on his approach to cinematography, lighting and editing. Barry Lyndon particularly lingers on the picturesque, with some beautiful individual shots akin to oil paintings.

https://www.sothetheorygoes.com/auteur-stanley-kubrick/

Pictorially, the elegant result emerges from a close collaboration between Kubrick (no mean photographer himself) and director of photography John Alcott, BSC.

https://ascmag.com/articles/flashback-barry-lyndon

What came across in the exhibition wasn’t just Kubrick’s attention to detail and singular vision but his ability to foster strong collaborative relationships, in this case with Alcott and Ed DiGuilio, who customised the lenses and cameras, to achieve the images.

As well as the discipline to “get rid of everything that isn’t essential”, this passage highlighted the exploratory nature of Kubrick’s process, even when he was in the final stages of the cutting room he was still trying to find out what the film could be. Although Kubrick work on largely conventional films, it could be argued he invented many of the conventions, for me there is an experimental quality to the way that he pushes to find the boundaries of what his films can be.