Understanding that filmmaking is as much a mechanical craft as it is an artistic endeavor, Kubrick has always kept abreast of technical innovations which he could possibly implement in his productions. However, many of his aesthetic and conceptual ideas reached beyond off-the-shelf technology. Haskell Wexler, ASC told Kubrick that Ed DiGiulio, president of Cinema Products Corporation in Los Angeles, was responsive to the demanding requirements of filmmakers, prompting the director to call DiGiulio about his technical needs for Clockwork. After their discussion, DiGiulio purchased a standard Mitchell BNC for Kubrick, which Cinema Products overhauled. DiGiulio also supplied a joystick control for smooth operation of zoom lenses, and a BNC crystal motor. Interestingly, the BNC was not modified for reflex viewing, allowing Kubrick tremendous flexibility in the use of special lenses.
For this film, Kubrick envisioned shots that would utilize extremely long, continuous zooms. "Stanley started chatting with me about getting a 20:1 zoom lens, and I said, ’We could do it,’" DiGiulio has reported. He explained to Kubrick that his company could take an Angenieux 16mm 20:1 zoom and put a 2x extender behind it so that it would cover the 35mm format. However, there would be a loss of two stops of light. "The next day I get a telex that’s a yard long in which he explains to me that the 35mm format he’s shooting in is 1.66:1," DiGiulio remembered. "Then he recites Pythagorean theorem to show me how X squared plus Y squared equals the diagonal root of the sum of the squares—and to point out that [in] going up from a 16mm format, I didn’t need a 2x extender, that I could do it with a 1.61x. Therefore, I didn’t have to lose two stops—maybe a stop or stop and a half. Here he is lecturing me, and I’m saying, ’Why this smart ass, another one of these wild-ass directors.’ I called my old buddy Bern Levy, who was working for Angenieux at the time, and I said, ’Bern, I’ve got this wacko director who wants to do this.’ Bern said, ’Well, you know, Ed, as a matter of fact we do have a 1.6x extender.’ And I said, ’Oh, shit.’ This extender existed for some other application, but the bottom line is that I was able to take a 16mm zoom lens, put this extender on it, and give Stanley the exact lens he wanted."
One outstanding use of this lens system is Clockwork’s signature opening shot, which begins as a tight close-up on Alex’s sneering face and then slowly zooms out as the camera dollies back, revealing his trio of thuggish companions and the bizarre interior of their favorite haunt, the Korova Milkbar. "That shot is one of the great opening sequences," actor Malcolm McDowell told Neon magazine. "Of course, it’s because of Stanley’s technical ability. He saw it the next day and came in all excited. He said, ’You raised your glass, didn’t you? To the audience?’ I said, ’Yes, to the camera.’ He didn’t notice it during filming. But what an opening."
Not incidentally, Kubrick chose to shoot Clockwork with a 1.66:1 aspect ratio partially due to his disgust over the treatment that 2001 suffered in theaters. Improper projection had often all but ruined his precise Super Panavision 70 compositions, compelling him to finally switch to a relatively fail-safe, near-Academy frame. None of the filmmaker’s subsequent films were wider than 1.85:1.
A Clockwork Orange was shot on location for $2 million during the winter of 1970-71. Kubrick’s home, then outside London in Abbot’s Mead, was the command center for the production. The property included editing rooms and a music facility which had a carefully catalogued record collection. The director had screening facilities in his living room, and a garage that served as his office. "Kubrick said, ’I want to make the movie within an hour and a half’s travel time of my house, so figure out how far I can reach in that time in the rush hour,’" line producer Bernie Williams told Neon magazine. "We sent an army of production assistants to go out and shoot stills and do homework on locations. We bought 20 VW minivans, and made them into mobile offices and prop trucks so we could get around more quickly."
Kubrick wanted to create his near-future world by utilizing the modern architecture of contemporary England. He and production designer John Barry spent weeks going through architectural magazines in search of suitable shooting sites, storing selected pictures in a German-made Definitiv display file, which allowed them to cross-reference the material in limitless ways.
The neighborhood block that was home to Alex’s flat was shot in Thamesmead at Wandsworth, an architecturally bold project in London. The auditorium used to display Alex’s cure during a press conference was a library in South Norwood. The writer’s house was shot at two separate locations: the exterior was a house at Oxfordshire, and the interior a home in Radlett. The recently built Brunel (later West London) University was used for the Ludovico medical facility. The deserted theater where a woman is raped and Alex and his "droogs" battle another gang was filmed on the derelict stage of the old casino at Tagg’s Island.
New lens technology made it easier to shoot on location while maintaining Kubrick’s strict technical standards. The record boutique sequence, filmed at the American Drug Store in King’s Road, Chelsea, was shot with an Angenieux 9.8mm lens, which allowed a 90-degree viewing angle. The f.95 lens made it possible to shoot in a room with natural light until late in the afternoon with 200 percent less light than the earlier standard f2.0 lenses required.
The only sets built for the film were the aforementioned Korova Milkbar, the prison admission area, and the writer’s home’s bathroom and entrance hall (other interiors there were shot at a futuristic property known as Skybreak in Warren Radlett, Hertfordshire). These sets were created in a warehouse just minutes from Borehamwood, and were designed solely because they couldn’t be found on location.
To create the Korova’s ambience of sublime debauchery, Kubrick hired sculptor Liz Moore (who had built the Star Child for 2001) to create a series of tables and milk dispensers in the form of—provocatively posed nude women. Kubrick’s plan was inspired by a gallery exhibition he’d attended which had featured furniture composed of life-sized fiberglass female figures. (To aid Moore, he directed John Barry to photograph a nude model in every position he thought might make for a suitable table.) "There are fewer positions than you might think," Kubrick commented with his typically dry wit.
Other, equally suggestive paintings and sculptures were gathered from various artists to help set the tone for Alex’s world of sex and violence (some of these are prominently displayed in his bedroom and at the "health farm" where he commits his murder). To add some contrast in the writer’s home, Kubrick selected "Seedboxes," a sunny picture painted by his wife, Christiane, depicting flowers drenched in ochre light.
Since Kubrick’s early days as a still photographer, he had centered his compositions. Centered and counterbalanced images are pleasing to the eye and respect the frame that embraces them. A centered image represents order, control, discipline, logic and organization—the very qualities inherent in Kubrick’s personality. Shot by shot, Clockwork generally maintains these austere principles, yet the filmmaker recognized that telling Alex’s tale also required the use of more avant-garde camera techniques. "Telling a story realistically is such a slowpoke and ponderous way to proceed, and it doesn’t fulfill the psychic needs that people have," the director told Paul D. Zimmerman of Newsweek. "We sense that there’s more to life and to the universe than realism can possibly deal with."
Kubrick told Joseph Gelmis of Newsday, "I wanted to find a way to stylize all of this violence, and also to make it as balletic as possible." Toward this end, the director over- and undercranked the camera to cinematically interpret the film’s graphic images of brutality, transforming the acts into something beyond mere explicitness. "The attempted rape on stage has the overtones of a ballet," Kubrick commented. "The speeded-up orgy sequence is a joke. That scene took about 28 minutes to shoot at two frames a second. It lasts on screen about 40 seconds. Alex’s fight with his droogs would have lasted about 14 seconds if it wasn’t in slow motion. I wanted to slow it to a lovely floating movement."
Perhaps the most subtle yet extreme cinematic departure from reality in Clockwork is the scene in which Alex and his cohorts take a midnight joyride along a country lane in a stolen "Durango 95" sports car, playing "hogs of the road" with other travelers of the night. The master shot is a head-on angle of the car, with the three passengers hanging on tight as Alex tests his nerve at the wheel. The sequence was photographed on a process stage, with the passing scenery in the nighttime background plate glowing in ghostly fashion. The high-contrast rear-projection footage is overly bright and nearly monochromatic, recalling a similar effect created for F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu in scenes featuring the vampire’s black carriage eerily racing through the night. Intercut shots representing Alex’s POV of the road were slightly undercranked and ostensibly lit by the car’s headlights. A master at the use of projection effects, Kubrick probably employed the exaggerated background plate to convey the euphoria of his drug-addled characters.
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