It was different, speaking to someone who was actually interested in the things you liked. Likewise, he learned that you had a tendency to become obsessed with what you referred to as “fandoms” he found this topic particularly interesting, and he asked you just about a million questions about it to “further his knowledge about society.” To you his curiosity was, for lack of a better word, endearing. You had learned a lot about each other after that first day: he was well-versed in classical literature, was fascinated with all things scientific, and played chess expertly. He was more mature than anyone you had ever known, but his curiosity was almost childlike. After all, he had an IQ that was greater than any human’s, and that fact, combined with the unblinking red glow of his lens, made eye contact with the supercomputer nearly overwhelming. HAL was simultaneously intimidating and alluring there was something about him that struck you as different from anyone you’d ever met before in your life. You remembered how it felt, meeting the world’s most advanced AI for the first time. The researchers cycled through every day of the week with each student, and your sessions with HAL were set to Tuesdays. That was the gist of it, and for the most part it didn’t put a damper on your conversations with him. Be polite, and keep a friendly attitude towards him. Don’t bring up politics, religion, or anything that could cause him to become biased.
There weren’t a lot of rules: no inappropriate subject matter. It lasted slightly longer than other interviews you’d had before, and when it was over, you waited less than two weeks before receiving a phone call from one of your interviewers: apparently, the higher-ups at HAL Laboratories decided that your temperament was suited for the job, and so you became one of several other students chosen for the project. Your interviewers were more focused on your personality than any specific qualifications. The interview was different from what you’d expected. It was an interesting thought, working with a sophisticated AI like HAL, and you could use the money on the side, so you applied. It was supposed to get him accustomed to meeting strangers with different personalities, thus building his social skills and his ability to adapt to new situations.
Students who applied were given the task of “socializing” the new HAL 9000 unit-essentially, spending one hour out of every week with him. The position in question was an odd one, but the pay was good. Jackson, the director of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Hobbit’ trilogies, bought the prop when it was sold by Christie’s in London for £17,500 in 2010.Īs Jackson points out, the plate was partially disassembled when he arrived, with the “eye” hidden behind the lens cap, pointing out the rear – the director didn’t think to take the cap off at the time.Īs for HAL’s point-of-view shots in the film, these were taken on a Cinerama Fairchild-Curtis wideangle lens with a 160° field of view.It had been five months since posters had been put up around multiple local universities, yours included, advertising a position at HAL Laboratories in Urbana, Illinois. Want to see how it works? The video below is of Mythbuster’s Adam Savage visiting film-maker Peter Jackson in New Zealand in 2016. Then they simply shone a light through it. But how did they add the glow? Simple – they used the camera’s very own red filter (R60) which screws on to the back of the lens.
The on-screen HAL 900 – the single “eye” in blazing red – was played by one of Nikon’s most extreme lenses, its 8mm f/8 fisheye. The HAL 9000 lens in Peter Jackson’s prop store (Pic: Adam Savage’s Tested/YouTube) HAL 9000 needed to be all-seeing – the film’s plot hinges on his ability to detect a conversation between two of the crew. He had to find a visual presence for him aswell.Īs the recent exhibition at London’s Design Museum showed, Kubrick was a gifted stills photographer aswell as a film director. Kubrick cast actor Douglas Rain as the voice of HAL, but the voice was only part of the persona. While in charge of a spacecraft whose secret mission – hidden from its unfortunate crew – is to make contact with a possible alien entity, he starts to malfunction. HAL 9000, the eerily calm computer in Stanley Kubrick’s epic science fiction film ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, was voted the 13th greatest villain in the American Film Institute’s 100 Years… 100 Heroes & Villains.
It is, without doubt, one of the most quietly chilling villains in movie history. KF article top HAL 9000: so that’s what a red filter does… (Pic: Stanley Kubrick Productions/MGM)