Mondo Knows Facts
The bone to satellite cut spans millennia
Kubrick cut from a thrown bone to an orbiting satellite in one frame In Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a prehuman throws a bone into the air and the film cuts to a satellite of similar shape drifting in orbit. The cut jumps millions of years in one frame, and the matching shapes let the audience follow. It is one of the most studied edits in cinema. It sits in Mondo's movies & tv collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
A voluntary ratings system replaced the Code in 1968Jack Valenti introduced the G, M, R and X categories to guide parentsBreathless used jump cuts to break continuityJean-Luc Godard cut inside scenes, making time appear to skipConversation scenes are built from opposing camera anglesShot and reverse shot are filmed separately and edited to look continuousMelies found the substitution splice by accidentA jammed camera turned a passing bus into a hearse, and he used itThe negative cutter assembles the original filmThey match the edit list to the camera negative and cement each shot in orderPsycho's shower scene took 78 camera setupsThe sequence runs about 45 seconds and has roughly 52 cuts
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Tags: editing, kubrick, 1968
The bone to satellite cut spans millennia: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Kubrick cut from a thrown bone to an orbiting satellite in one frame. The figure is taken from BFI, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a movies & tv fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Movies & TV shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.