Watch all of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘one-point perspective’ scenes
For filmmakers to fully cement themselves in film history, scholarship and culture, they must bring something distinct and unknown to the table. The skill needs to be used so eminently that it becomes synonymous with them and their work. This can be a thematic value, a colour motif, a shot, or a method of camera movement. Wes Anderson has his pastel colour palette symmetry, and Agnes Varda embodied exploring personal relationships through symbolism. Film genius Stanley Kubrick revolutionised film visuals through his iconic trademarks, including ‘The Kubrick Stare’ and the one-point perspective-an attentive and effective shot composition that translates film language to audiences.
An intricate explanation of the one-point perspective shot mentions the significance of the horizontal lines in the frame and how the front plane of an object is directly in front of the character and runs parallel to the horizon line. The shot also relies on the vanishing point, meaning the centre of the frame where the lines would disappear if extended infinitely. Think of the hallway scene in The Shining where Danny is sitting on the floor with the camera placed behind him to encapsulate both him and the rest of the hallway in front of him.
As Kubrick was an artist who had a method for every little spark of madness, the one-point perspective is valuable, practical and intentional. Using symmetry in the horizontal lines, Kubrick magnifies his visual material for the audience’s eye and designs it to play with their minds. The shot may present an uneventful image of nothing happening, directing the audience’s focus on a particular point as the shot’s highlight. As a result, they anticipate if or when something will happen to break the reposeful nature of the scene that the composition orchestrates.
Miguel Parga, a filmmaking teacher at the New York Film Academy, further explains Kubrick’s intentions for one-point perspective: “Kubrick and his one-point perspective shots force you to look at the world differently. When you crouch down, you’re looking at the world from the point of view of somebody of that height – a child perhaps.”
He adds: “In this way, the director forces not only a change of perspective but a psychological change as well. He wants you to look at the world through the eyes of a child.”
This highlights the power of cinema and visual language as a whole; filmmakers can direct their shots to infiltrate and alter a spectator’s outlook. This is the influence of Kubrick’s one-point perspective, present in most of his works such as The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Full Metal Jacket. These features are studied and praised in film decades after release for their employment of shot composition and camera movement to translate meaning and audience engagement, showing an alliance between cinematography and cognition. This successful exploration of the relationship between filmmaker/film and audience plays an essential part in Kubrick’s legendary status in filmmaking, as it exhibits not only his creative passion for visual storytelling but also his intellectual enlightenment of its properties.
Watch a supercut of every Kubrick film that uses one-point perspective below.
