Editing Stanley Kubrick (section)

=== Short films (1951–1953) ===
Kubrick shared a love of film with his school friend [[Alexander Singer]], who after graduating from high school had the intention of directing a film version of [[Homer]]'s ''[[Iliad]]''. Through Singer, who worked in the offices of the newsreel production company, ''[[The March of Time]]'', Kubrick learned it could cost $40,000 to make a proper short film, a sum he could not afford. He had $1500 in savings and produced a few short documentaries fueled by encouragement from Singer. He began learning all he could about filmmaking on his own, calling film suppliers, laboratories, and equipment rental houses.{{sfn|Duncan|2003|p=23}}

Kubrick decided to make a short film documentary about boxer [[Walter Cartier]], whom he had photographed and written about for ''Look'' magazine a year earlier. He rented a camera and produced a 16-minute black-and-white documentary, ''[[Day of the Fight]]''. Kubrick found the money independently to finance it. He had considered asking [[Montgomery Clift]] to narrate it, whom he had met during a photographic session for ''Look'', but settled on CBS news veteran [[Douglas Edwards]].{{sfn|LoBrutto|1999|p=68}} According to Paul Duncan the film was "remarkably accomplished for a first film", and used a backward tracking shot to film a scene in which Cartier and his brother walk towards the camera, a device which later became one of Kubrick's characteristic camera movements.{{sfn|Duncan|2003|p=25}} Vincent Cartier, Walter's brother and manager, later reflected on his observations of Kubrick during the filming. He said, "Stanley was a very stoic, impassive but imaginative type person with strong, imaginative thoughts. He commanded respect in a quiet, shy way. Whatever he wanted, you complied, he just captivated you. Anybody who worked with Stanley did just what Stanley wanted".{{sfn|Duncan|2003|p=23}}{{efn|Walter Cartier also said of Kubrick: "Stanley comes in prepared like a fighter for a big fight, he knows exactly what he's doing, where he's going and what he wants to accomplish. He knew the challenges and he overcame them".{{sfn|LoBrutto|1999|p=59}}}} After a score was added by Singer's friend [[Gerald Fried]], Kubrick had spent $3900 in making it, and sold it to [[RKO Pictures|RKO-Pathé]] for $4000, which was the most the company had ever paid for a short film at the time.{{sfn|Duncan|2003|p=25}} Kubrick described his first effort at filmmaking as having been valuable since he believed himself to have been forced to do most of the work,{{Sfn|King|Molloy|Tzioumakis|2013|p=156}} and he later declared that the "best education in film is to make one".{{sfn|Duncan|2003|p=15}}

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Inspired by this early success, Kubrick quit his job at ''Look'' and visited professional filmmakers in New York City, asking many detailed questions about the technical aspects of filmmaking. He stated that he was given the confidence during this period to become a filmmaker because of the number of bad films he had seen, remarking, "I don't know a goddamn thing about movies, but I know I can make a better film than that".{{sfn|Duncan|2003|p=13}} He began making ''[[Flying Padre]]'' (1951), a film which documents Reverend Fred Stadtmueller, who travels some 4,000 miles to visit his 11 churches. The film was originally going to be called "Sky Pilot", a pun on the slang term for a priest.{{sfn|Baxter|1997|p=39}} During the course of the film, the priest performs a burial service, confronts a boy bullying a girl, and makes an emergency flight to aid a sick mother and baby into an ambulance. Several of the views from and of the plane in ''Flying Padre'' are later echoed in ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001: A Space Odyssey]]'' (1968) with the footage of the spacecraft, and a series of close-ups on the faces of people attending the funeral were most likely inspired by [[Sergei Eisenstein]]'s ''[[Battleship Potemkin]]'' (1925) and ''[[Ivan the Terrible (1944 film)|Ivan the Terrible]]'' (1944/1958).{{sfn|Duncan|2003|p=25}}

''Flying Padre'' was followed by ''[[The Seafarers]]'' (1953), Kubrick's first color film, which was shot for the [[Seafarers International Union of North America|Seafarers International Union]] in June 1953. It depicted the logistics of a democratic union and focused more on the amenities of seafaring other than the act. For the cafeteria scene in the film, Kubrick chose a [[dolly shot]] to establish the life of the seafarer's community; this kind of shot would later become a signature technique. The sequence of [[Paul Hall (labor leader)|Paul Hall]], secretary-treasurer of the SIU Atlantic and gulf district, speaking to members of the union echoes scenes from Eisenstein's ''[[Strike (1925 film)|Strike]]'' (1925) and ''[[October: Ten Days That Shook the World|October]]'' (1928).{{sfn|Duncan|2003|p=28}} ''Day of the Fight'', ''Flying Padre'' and ''The Seafarers'' constitute Kubrick's only surviving documentary works; some historians believe he made others.{{Sfn|Thuss|2002|p=110}}