In rereading what I'd written in my last post, I somehow feel more able to communicate my true point in those last paragraphs. There is a symmetry to the emotional context and visual content in Kubrick's films that I'm not sure I need to echo with my work. The same way people end reviews of The Sopranos' final episode by cutting off mid-word (the final episode cut to black quite abruptly rather than summarize the show), I think there's a desire when it comes to Kubrick to somehow become the Kubrick of poster design, of movie reviews, of classical music selection, etc., until it's so "meta" that you can't tell if what you've made is born of sarcasm or not.
My desire to move away from something like this occurred while putting together some images of the sketches I've been working on. Below, you'll see rough sketches of how my idea for the poster evolved:
I'm moving fairly quickly while I'm sketching because, as I mentioned in the previous post, I've been thinking about this for some time and I've eliminated several ideas already. Obviously when I'm doing client work I try to sketch everything, good and bad.
An initial idea on the far left was to use the numbers 2-0-0-1 with some color overlay. Another idea (same image) was pulled from the book: Bowman's pod as it moved through an enormous sun, engulfed in flame and nearly invisible against the mass of fire. The center sketch is my first drawing of the lyrics to "Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)." (At the top of the page is a sketch of the strong radio waves released by the monolith on contact with direct sunlight.) The drawing to the right is playing with the type a bit more and drawing out the lines to suggest change and perhaps depth, though to be honest the dot grid on the page is restraining the emotion I am trying to evoke with this design.
Below is my most final sketch (yes, I know I misspelled "Stanley"):
The use of type here is much more suggestive of the words I had initially settled on during my brainstorm for this project: anxiety, uneasiness, tension, depth, existential dread, solitude, the unknowable vastness of space, abandonment, awe, loss of mental faculty.
I had put this project away for a week—work was slamming and I do have a 10-month-old—and in looking at this again, it feels so much more evocative of the loss of mental faculty than anything else. In growing old we fear death at the root of all other fears: abandonment, isolation, etc. While HAL, it could be argued, is only a computer, he is the most advanced artificial intelligence in existence. Is his death dissimilar to ours? What happens when our minds degrade? HAL's death is just as compelling as Bowman's impending isolation.
I'll be posting a step 3, which will be digital sketches and concepts, and a step 4, which will likely be the finished work with my own assessment, all within the next several weeks.