Lag’s Art Blog

I’m LagBlowz (or Lag whichever you prefer) and I do art, mostly robot OCs for a sci-fi novel I’m writing, but I’m trying to draw more of my friend’s stuff/things I like.

No particular schedule when posting stuff, I’m just going to do it when I feel like it.

That’s right, comin for my fourth artfight!

Crazy they have three teams this year, but I felt like I was obligated towards comedy, I am a jester after all

See you in a few weeks!

So, I'm bored, looking around duckduckgo video search results for the opening music from The Shining - cause it's giving me a really good mental picture of a scene I want to write - and I've come across something interesting

and by interesting, I mean interesting to me and my film degree

This particular youtube upload of the movie's opening that was posted around 2 years ago is not the high-quality version you usually see floating around on the internet or modern home releases. I'm 90% sure it's a VHS release based on the 4:3 aspect ratio, the old Warner logo at the start, and of course the static and artifacting that comes with watching a movie on VHS.

But the thing that really grabbed me was a single shot.

the fourth shot of the opening scene is this long helicopter shot, and like the others in the opening, the idea is to make the yellow Volkswagen seem incredibly small, isolated in the rockies on these desolate mountain roads. It's a very good shot, much like the rest of the opening, a masterclass in the quiet building of dread that Kubrick was so great at. But there's one thing in this particular cut of the opening that I've never seen in any other version.

For whatever reason, this version of this shot cuts in much earlier than usual, so as the car feels even smaller, and less is visible. But it does something else, something I cannot possibly think was intentional.

At just the right moment in the shot, the camera is at just the right angle-

that the shadow of the helicopter the camera is mounted to is plainly visible in the bottom righthand of the screen. And by visible, I of course mean 72 FULL FRAMES OF VIDEO. That's - going by the typical 24 fps for film - almost exactly three full seconds!

And that was just the first of these oddities I noticed in this cut. The shot just afterwards, and the shot just prior, are so zoomed out, you can actually see the edge of the camera lens, giving the shot a slight vignette.

Of course, there is something to be said about just how warm the color correct is, but that's a difference almost to be expected in different eras of home releases

So, why does this matter?

Well, in the grand scheme of things, it kinda doesn't. The Shining is still The Shining, easily one of the best horror films ever made. But this particular cut does something newer releases and edits of films seem to shy away from; it reveals the very human process of its creation.

You see this a lot in newer releases of older films if you pay enough attention to it, you may notice the nearly invisible strings holding up miniature props in front of the camera to give the impression that it's floating or flying, but would you notice it if it suddenly wasn't there?

I'm almost mad this isn't in newer edits. I know it wasn't what was envisioned, it messes with Kubrick's famous perfectionism, but in an era where not only is the very human nature of film threatened, but one which has seen the extinction of the helicopter mounted camera for filming, I don't know, it's like the earmark of another era. It shows you silently, unintentionally, all the work that went into making that single shot. AT LEAST one person behind the camera, AT LEAST one flying the helicopter, AT LEAST one driving the Volkswagen, perhaps someone in both the Volkswagen AND the helicopter to facilitate communication between the two, the scouts who found the locations, the people who GOT the helicopter and the Volkswagen out there for the shoot, whosever job it was to inspect the dailies once the filming was over,the editors and color graders back home once everything was filmed, and, of course, Stanley himself back in England.

Those three seconds of that shadow being cast onto the bare rock next to that road in Montana's Glacier National Park reveal the humanity behind even the greatest of films, one that neither can, nor should, ever be stripped away.