Back when Stanley Kubrick moved to Britain to for “Lolita,” he shot the majority of the film at Elstree Studios, close to his new home of Abbots Mead just south of the studio complex. Though he’d moved to Childwickbury Manor by the time he started production on “The Shining,” he returned to the same studio for his 1980 horror adaptation, constructing the famous Overlook Hotel interiors at Elstree Studios on Shenley Road, Borehamwood.
Filming began in May 1978 and finished in July 1979, at the very studio where “Star Wars” had been shot the year prior and the “Indiana Jones” movies would shoot in years to come. Kubrick basically used every inch of Elstree, too, erecting sets across four stages and ensuring that the entirety of the Overlook’s interior was available to shoot whenever he wanted. The giant exterior maze, in which Danny (Danny Lloyd) tries to escape from his deranged father during the film’s climax, was actually built inside on stage 1, with production using two feet of dendritic dairy salt and Styrofoam to create the snow. Other parts of the maze were filmed on a backlot at Elstree.
The rest of the soundstages hosted equally impressive sets, too, with the main lounge of the Overlook Hotel being perhaps the most memorable. Its large windows, which appeared to look out into the Colorado Rockies, were actually facing an 80 by 30-foot diffusion backing with 860 1000-watt lamps providing the stark lighting effects. As cinematographer John Alcott told American Cinematographer, the extreme heat given off by such a grandiose lighting display meant “you just couldn’t walk from one end to the other between the lights and the backing. You just couldn’t make it.”
The Overlook interiors were the largest set ever built at Elstree at that time, alongside some other interior locations that included the Torrance’s apartment, Dick Halloran’s Miami home, and the ranger station. The studio was also used for several exterior shots, such as the back of the Overlook during the Torrances’ tour of the grounds and shots of the characters running outside.
Lamentably, these impressive sets were almost destroyed altogether when a fire broke out on the lounge set. As still photographer Murray Close told fan site The Overlook Hotel, “We had a very big fire […] in one of the sound stages. It was the stage that had the set of the Overlook Hotel with the lounge set where Jack typed and he chased Shelley Duvall around with a baseball bat. It was a huge fire in there one day. Massive fire.” According to Close, the cause of the blaze was never determined, though perhaps the massive, scorching hot lighting rig had something to do with it? The photographer recalled the fire burning down two sound stages and threatening a third, which resulted in a cost of $2.5 million and a three-week delay. Not that “The Shining” is typically thought of as a horror movie that was cursed in real life, but that’s a heck of a bad omen.
