Talk:Stanley Kubrick/sandbox2

This sandbox page will include newly-added text to Stanley Kubrick with a diff, text added, problems noted or other comments, and possible improvement ideas. --Light show (talk) 00:42, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

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Inspired by this early success, Kubrick quit his job at Look and visited professional filmmakers in New York City, asking many detailed questions on the technical aspects of film-making. He has stated that he was given confidence during this period to become a filmmaker because of the number of lousy films which he had seen, remarking that "I don't know a goddamn thing about movies, but I know I can make a better film than that". During this period he earned money from playing chess in Washington Square and found an uncanny comparison with the logic, order, and strategy needed in film-making. He began making Flying Padre (1951), a film which documents Reverend Fred Stadtmueller who travels some 4,000 miles to visit his eleven churches. During the course of the film he performs a burial service, confronts a boy bullying a girl, and makes an emergency flight to aid a sick mother and baby into an ambulance. Several of the views from and of the plane in Flying Padre are later echoed in 2001:A Space Odyssey in the footage of the spacecraft, and a series of close-ups of faces at the funeral in the film are clearly inspired by Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible. Flying Padre was followed by The Seafarers (1953), Kubrick's first color film. Day of the Fight, Flying Padre and The Seafarers constitute Kubrick's only surviving documentary works, although some historians believe he made others. He also served as second unit director on an episode of the TV show, Omnibus, about Abraham Lincoln, clips of which are included in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001).

Obvious problems: You have greatly expanded a clear and brief paragraph into six separate topics, mostly film-related trivia, divided below, all jumbled into one hodge-podge paragraph. Which, btw, is exactly how the demolition of Sellers began. Note also that another editor has joined your team by now tagging the lead image.

• Inspired by this early success, Kubrick quit his job at Look and visited professional filmmakers in New York City, asking many detailed questions on the technical aspects of film-making. He has stated that he was given confidence during this period to become a filmmaker because of the number of lousy films which he had seen, remarking that "I don't know a goddamn thing about movies, but I know I can make a better film than that".

• During this period he earned money from playing chess in Washington Square and found an uncanny comparison with the logic, order, and strategy needed in film-making.

• He began making Flying Padre (1951), a film which documents Reverend Fred Stadtmueller who travels some 4,000 miles to visit his eleven churches. During the course of the film he performs a burial service, confronts a boy bullying a girl, and makes an emergency flight to aid a sick mother and baby into an ambulance.

• Several of the views from and of the plane in Flying Padre are later echoed in 2001:A Space Odyssey in the footage of the spacecraft, and a series of close-ups of faces at the funeral in the film are clearly inspired by Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible.

• Flying Padre was followed by The Seafarers (1953), Kubrick's first color film. Day of the Fight, Flying Padre and The Seafarers constitute Kubrick's only surviving documentary works, although some historians believe he made others.

• He also served as second unit director on an episode of the TV show, Omnibus, about Abraham Lincoln, clips of which are included in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001).

--Light show (talk) 23:43, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

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• Problem: Unnecessary film details added to a general section called Film career:

which was shot for the Seafarers International Union in June 1953. There are shots of ships, machinery, a canteen, and a union meeting. For the cafeteria scene in the film, Kubrick chose a long, sideways-shooting dolly shot to establish the life of the seafarer's community; this shot is an early demonstration of a signature technique that Kubrick would use in his feature films.

Reduced to relevant detail: Kubrick chose a long dolly shot to establish the life of the seafarer's community, a signature technique that Kubrick would use in later films. --Light show (talk) 23:55, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

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After raising $1000 showing his short films to friends and family, Kubrick found the finances to begin making his first feature film, Fear and Desire (1953), originally running with the title The Trap. Kubrick's uncle, Martin Perveler, a Los Angeles businessman, invested a further $9000 on condition that he be credited as executive producer of the film. Kubrck assembled several actors and a small crew and flew to the San Gabriel Mountains in California for a five-week shoot.

• Problems noted:Excessive production trivia. --Light show (talk) 00:08, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

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totaling fourteen people (five actors, five crewman and four Mexicans to help transport the equipment) and flew to the San Gabriel Mountains in California for a five-week low-budget shoot. Later renamed The Shape of Fear before finally being named Fear and Desire, it is an allegorical tale about a team of soldiers who survive a plane crash and are caught behind enemy lines in a fictional war. During the course of the film one of the soldiers becomes enchanted with a beautiful girl in the woods and binds her to a tree, noted for its close-ups of the face of the actress. To generate fog, Kubrick hired a crop sprayer to drop insecticide in the location which almost killed the team. To reduce production costs, Kubrick had intended to make it a silent picture, but in the end the adding of sounds, effects and music brought the production over-budget to over $50,000, and had to be bailed out by producer Richard de Rochemont, on condition that he help in his production of a five-part television series about Abraham Lincoln on location in Hodgenville, Kentucky. Upon release, Fear and Desire garnered some respectable reviews but was still a commercial failure. Critics such as the reviewer from The New York Times believed that Kubrick's professionalism as a photographer shone through in the picture, and that he "artistically caught glimpses of the grotesque attitudes of death, the wolfishness of hungry men as well as their bestiality, and in one scene, the wracking effect of lust on a pitifully juvenile soldier and the pinioned girl he is guarding". Columbia University scholar Mark Van Doren was particularly impressed with the tree girl footage, remarking that it would make movie history as a "beautiful, terrifying and weird" scene which illustrated his immense talent and guaranteed his future success.

• Problem noted: All film and plot-related trivia and jumble of disconnected factoids, many in one sentence:

Two subjects: During the course of the film one of the soldiers becomes enchanted with a beautiful girl in the woods and binds her to a tree, noted for its close-ups of the face of the actress.

Followed by separate production trivia: To generate fog, Kubrick hired a crop sprayer to drop insecticide in the location which almost killed the team.

Followed by a long, convoluted multi-topic jumble of disconnected facts, not even worthy of adding to the film's article: To reduce production costs, Kubrick had intended to make it a silent picture, but in the end the adding of sounds, effects and music brought the production over-budget to over $50,000, and had to be bailed out by producer Richard de Rochemont, on condition that he help in his production of a five-part television series about Abraham Lincoln on location in Hodgenville, Kentucky.

The rest of that trivia-loaded paragraph is more of the same. --Light show (talk) 00:08, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

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The montage of speaker and audience echoes scenes from Eisenstein's Strike and October.

• Problem: trivia

--Light show (talk) 00:12, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

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Due to the commercial failure of his first feature, Kubrick avoided asking for further investments, but began working on a film noir script with Hward O. Sackler. Originally under the title Kiss Me, Kill Me, and then The Nymph and the Maniac, Killer's Kiss is a 67-minute film noir film about a young heavyweight boxer's involvement with a woman being abused by her criminal boss. Like Fear and Desire, it was privately funded by Kubrick's family and friends, with some $40,000 put forward from Bronx pharmacist Morris Bousse. Kubrick began shooting footage on Times Square, and on one night he was approached by curious policeman on Wall Street, to which he gave them $20 each to keep quiet. Kubrick had the time to do much exploration during the film, discovering new angles and ways to generate imagery, and experimenting with lighting. He initially decided on recording the sound on location but encountered difficulties with shadows from the microphone booms, restricting camera movement. His decision to drop the sound in favor of imagery was a costly one; and 12-14 weeks shooting the picture, he spent some seven months and $35,000 working on the sound.

One of the film's most prominent scenes is a finale fight in a mannequin warehouse, which while unusual was an intentional metaphor for the way the central characters become other people's puppets and are forced to act against their own will earlier in the film.

• Problem: Trivia about financial details in para 1 and trivia in para 2. --Light show (talk) 00:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Example of choppy, short sentences making text grade-school quality.

From Early life:

When Kubrick was twelve, his father taught him chess. The game remained a lifelong obsession and appeared in many scenes in his films. Kubrick explained that chess helped him develop "patience and discipline" in making decisions. At the age of thirteen, Kubrick's father bought him a Graflex camera, triggering a fascination with still photography.He become friends with a neighbour, Marvin Taub, who shared his passion for photography. Taub had his own darkroom where he and the young Kubrick would spend many hours perusing over photographs and watching the chemicals "magically make images on photographic paper". The two would indulge in many photographic "assignments", crawling the streets looking for interesting subjects to capture, and would also spend much time in local cinemas studying films. As a teenager, Kubrick was interested in jazz, and briefly attempted a career as a drummer. His father was disappointed in his failure to achieve excellence in school,of which he felt Stanley fully capable. He encouraged him to read from his library at home while, at the same time, permitting him to take up photography as a serious hobby.

From Personal life:

His new home, originally a large country mansion once owned by a wealthy racehorse owner, became a workplace for Kubrick and Christiane. One of the large ballroom-size rooms became her painting studio. Kubrick converted the stables into extra production rooms besides ones within the home that he used for editing and storage. Christiane called their home "a perfect family factory." Kubrick rarely left England during the forty years before he died. Although Kubrick once held a pilot's license, some have claimed that he later developed a fear of flying and refused to take airplane trips. Matthew Modine, star of Full Metal Jacket, stated that the stories about his fear of flying were "fabricated," and that "he wasn't afraid to fly." He simply preferred spending most of his time in England, where his films were produced and where he lived.