As a kid, watching "The Shining," I remember seeing it. Recently, though, on my umpteenth viewing of "The Shining," only this time on Blu-ray, I noticed its absence. What happened? Did they edit it out?
shareI haven't seen the BR. But that would definitely make sense to edit it out to make the movie as good as can be!! 😃
shareGo on Google and type "The Shining" and "helicopter shadow." You'll see it.
shareI know the shadow you speak of, very well. But I have not seen the Blu-ray version. So I'm guessing that yes, they probably edited it out in order to make the scene better. They would've had no way of removing the shadow back in the day. And Blu-rays are "supposed" to be the best version that they can make for the viewer. So it makes scene that they took it out.
shareI liked it. It made me realize that geniuses like Kubrick could still make mistakes just like the rest of us (unless, that is, he actually meant the helicopter shadow to be in there).
shareThere are MANY mistakes in Kubrick films.
shareIt's interesting a man like Kubrick, who was known for devoting a hundred takes, even more, to one scene, would overlook (no pun intended) something like the shadow of a helicopter. It doesn't bother me -- it was a flub I grew up on. In all honesty I would have preferred if they left it in.
shareI agree, they should have left it in. I remember how cool I thought I was noticing a mistake in the movie. I'm sure someone told me about it though. Kids, haha.
shareThat's exactly right, all these theories on the continuity errors being deliberate on Kubrick's behalf (although I personally believe that some actually were, but definitely not all) are somewhat misplaced because when you have so many people working on a big budget production and over so many months there's bound to be mistakes that make their way into the movie.
People seem to forget that Kubrick was only human, not some superman film maker that could do no wrong.
The movie was shot in "open matte" format and was supposed to have the top and bottom portions cropped off for theatrical release. That was why Kubrick left the helicopter shadow there, since he knew it would be cropped. It was uncropped later mainly because of TV broadcast and VHS tape releases, which showed the film in 4:3 full screen. In the old days when we watched full-screen movies on 4:3 TV sets, we saw goofs like that pretty often because of this reason. Most of the goofs were microphones hanging at the top of the actors and such.
shareThis right here! Haha, it's funny that so many people get lost in analytical pretentiousness, they don't even realize that 35mm film's original aspect ratio is 1:33:1, and nearly every film shown in 1:85:1 widescreen (before digital camera came along in the 21st century) were cropped (or matted, same thing). It really shows how little some people know about movie making.
In the 60s when Kubrick did Spartacus or 2001 he shot them in 2:20:1 or 2:35:1 widescreen because back in the 60s VHS wasn't a thing, and people really only saw films in theaters, so he wanted to give the audience the widescreen experience, as did a lot of other filmmakers back in the day. Most of Kubrick's other early films were either shot in 1:66:1 or 1:85:1 for artistic reasons. In the late 70s he probably started noticing that films shown on TV or tape were either being cropped or shown in open matte formats, so that's why his later films were shot in 1:85:1 widescreen, so his films could be shown in an open matte format and not fall victim to that horrid thing known as "pan and scan".
In the early 2000s when Warner Bros released his first batch of films on DVD they decided to keep it in 1:33:1 because most everyone back then had a square shaped TV. People thought this move was for pure Kubricky artistic reasons, and not the fact that Warner Bros. just wanted the film fit your TV screen. Then came 2006, and 16:9 TVs were starting to get manufactured and Blu-Ray discs were being released. There was a big uproar from Kubrick fans claiming that they went against his artistic intentions claiming that they merely just cropped the films to fit the 16:9 TVs, not realizing that the movies were always meant to be cropped in that aspect ratio. They didn't realize that all the films on Blu-Ray were being taken back to their intended source, even Clockwork Orange went back to 1:66:1 in its Blu-Ray release.
That being said, when you watch The Shining on Blu-Ray, I noticed during the first exterior shot of the hotel, you can obviously see blurred helicopter blades in motion on top of the frame.
And if any of you own any MGM DVDs from the early 2000s that include both Full Frame and Widescreen versions on one disc (Keep in mind the widescreen version has to be 1:85:1) you'll notice that the full frame version will always have more picture showing on the top and bottom of the screen.
Some filmmakers create two versions for theaters and TV: the theatrical version would show a wider screen and less screen at the top and bottom, while the TV 4:3 version would show less picture left and right but more picture top and bottom. "Terminator 2" was done this way.
Also want to add that all these goofs we see on IMDb's trivia (or goofs) section may not be goofs at all for reasons I stated earlier: that the filmmakers intended those portions of the screen to be cropped. But sometimes there were true goofs, especially in low budget films, understandably.
Maybe Kubrick was more interested in the film being philosophically, aesthetically and emotionally "right", rather than being a slave to continuity and physics...?
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