When Mythbusters’ Adam Savage isn’t, uh, busting myths, he spends his time crafting amazing replicas of movie props, among other hobbies. This time around it’s the hedge maze from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, prompted by Savage’s disappointment in what should have been the “official” version.
The video here, which describes the build process in detail, starts with Savage’s explanation for embarking on the endeavour in the first place. After visiting the Kubrick exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), he discovered the hedge maze architectural model on display is completely different from the one in the movie, not to mention the quality is not the greatest. From that point, Savage was determined to create a more accurate one.
The project was not as straightforward as you might think.
Because movies are movies, there are several representations of the maze in The Shining, with varying degrees of detail: the architectural model in the Colorado room; the façade you see during the day; the top-down map in front of the maze, the quarter-sized one for the movie’s finale and another for a zoom-out shot in the Colorado room. Of course, none of them are the same, though Savage decided to use the map for the basis of his model, as it provided the best reference material.
The walls are made of a lightweight particle board, with spray paint and flocking to provide colour and texture. After that, it was just a matter of putting the time in — just the outside edges and the central section took 16 hours do to.
Hopefully he can convince LACMA to use his model instead.