Douglas Trumbull

“I visited a scientist who had a helmet with magnetic fields controlled by computer sequences that could profoundly affect your mood and your perceptions.”

“We're not that far from being able to plant images, memories, and emotional states directly into the brain.”

“My first job on 2001 was to make all of the HAL readouts: the 16 screens that surround HAL's eyes.”

“I have the deepest respect for Terrence Malick and greatly enjoyed helping him on 'Tree of Life.' I consider him to be a good personal friend and professional contemporary.”

“I'd formed a research and development company under the banner of Paramount Pictures back in about 1975, and its mandate was to explore advanced forms of entertainment, not just movies.”

“There were IBM logos designed for the film, and there were IBM design consultants working with Kubrick on the layout of the controls and computer screens.”

“Peter Jackson is a real big hero of mine because he had the nerve to make 'The Hobbit' at 48 frames per second.”

“Working on '2001' was my film school. Stanley Kubrick was my mentor.”

“It was the point where things became much more abstract and less literal than in the bulk of the film, which was hardcore rockets and space and planets - all a fairly straightforward evolution from what I had been doing before.”

“I like the unknown. That's what Terry Malick has always really liked. He's always looking for the unexpected.”

“'2001' used a lot of what's called 'front projection.' You project an image onto this giant reflective screen, and the image bounces back and comes back to the lens and seems to be in the background behind the actors. The whole 'dawn of man' sequence in '2001' was projected eight-by-ten photographs of the African savannah.”

“The diversity of content is now offered from streaming and downloading, so young people are really not going to theaters because they don't see any particular benefit.”

“My personal feeling is that ultra-high frame rates and ultra-vivid giant screen movies can be like a window onto reality. And if you recognize it as such, you can write your screenplay, direct your movie, edit it, and present it as a live experience - not like a movie.”

“I think 'Avatar' is much more appropriate to high frame rates because it's like a ride, and it's futuristic, and vividness and sharp edges and clarity would be an asset.”

“It's not appropriate to a love story, or - there are a million stories you could think of that don't need 3D. A lot of movies don't even need color!”

“My particular aesthetic of light and color and design wouldn't change as a result of working with computer graphics rather than with slit scan or miniatures.”

“If you want people to come to theaters, you better do something different.”

“I'm developing some high-frame-rate 3-D processes that are going to be, I hope, indistiguishable from reality. This will be quite an unusual cinematic event - you don't just tell an ordinary story, it's more of a first-person experience where the melodrama doesn't get in the way. Being inside the movie rather than looking at the movie.”