Kubrick was more enthusiastic about the possibilities of the manuscript:

Casting

thumb|left|upright=.5|Newspaper ad for the role of Danny Torrance

Jack Nicholson was Kubrick's first choice for the role of Jack Torrance; other actors considered included Robert De Niro (who said the film gave him nightmares for a month), Robin Williams and Harrison Ford, all of whom met with King's disapproval. Kris Kristofferson was Kubrick's backup choice if Nicholson had declined. King, for his part, disavowed Nicholson because he thought that, because of his part in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the viewer would tend to consider him an unstable individual from the beginning. For this reason, King preferred Jon Voight, Michael Moriarty or Martin Sheen for the role, who would more faithfully represent the profile of the ordinary individual who is gradually driven to madness. In any case, from the beginning the writer was told that the actor for the lead role "was not negotiable".

Although Nicholson initially suggested that Jessica Lange would be a better fit for the role of Wendy Torrance, Shelley Duvall knew early that she was the one cast for the role (Nicholson would work with Lange on his next movie, The Postman Always Rings Twice). Wendy's character in the film differs from the novel, appearing less capable and more vulnerable. Throughout filming, Kubrick pushed Duvall, she said, "to get the performance out of me that he wanted". King said in a 1978 interview that the casting of Duvall was "an example of absolutely grotesque casting".

Slim Pickens was offered the role of Dick Hallorann, but Pickens remembered his experience of working with Kubrick on Dr. Strangelove and told the director that he would take the role only if his scenes in the film were shot in fewer than 100 takes. Kubrick declined and Scatman Crothers got the part after he had been suggested by Pickens's agent.

The director's initial candidate to play the Torrances' son Danny Torrance was Cary Guffey (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), but the young actor's parents refused, saying the film was too gruesome for a child. In his search to find the right actor to play Danny, Kubrick sent Leon (who portrayed Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon) and Kersti Vitali, a husband-and-wife team, to Chicago, Denver and Cincinnati to create an interview pool of 5,000 boys over a six-month period. These cities were chosen since Kubrick was looking for a boy with an accent that fell between Jack Nicholson's and Shelley Duvall's speech patterns, with Nicholson coming from New Jersey and Duvall from Texas. During the filming, Danny Lloyd, the young actor selected, was protected in a special way by Kubrick; the boy believed at all times that he was shooting a drama, not a horror movie. Following his role in the 1982 film Will: G. Gordon Liddy, Lloyd abandoned his acting career.

Filming

Principal photography began in May 1978 and wrapped in April 1979, it took place mainly in Elstree Studios, in southern England.

thumb|The [[Ahwahnee Hotel's Great Lounge was, in large part, the model for the Overlook Hotel's Colorado Lounge set in Elstree Studios.]]

Interior sets

Having chosen King's novel as a basis for his next project, and after a pre-production phase, Kubrick had sets constructed on soundstages at EMI Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England. Some of the interior designs of the Overlook Hotel set were based on those of the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. To enable him to shoot the scenes in loose chronological order, he used several stages at EMI Elstree Studios in order to make all sets available during the complete duration of production. The set for the Overlook Hotel was at the time the largest ever built at Elstree, including a life-size re-creation of the exterior of the hotel. In February 1979, the Colorado Lounge set at Elstree was badly damaged in a fire, causing a delay in the production.

Exterior locations

thumb|left|The [[Timberline Lodge in Oregon, which served as the exterior of the Overlook Hotel]]

While most of the film was shot on interior sets and the full-scale exterior facade replica at Elstree Studios, a second-unit crew headed by Jan Harlan shot some sequences on location in the American West. Saint Mary Lake and its Wild Goose Island in Glacier National Park, Montana were featured in the aerial shots of the opening scenes, with the Volkswagen Beetle driving along Going-to-the-Sun Road. The Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon was filmed for a few of the establishing shots of the fictional Overlook Hotel; absent in these shots is the hedge maze, which the real Timberline Lodge does not have. The Ahwahnee Hotel (the Overlook Hotel's main interior reference) and the Timberline Lodge (the hotel's main exterior) were both designed by architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood, in the 1920s and 1930s respectively.

Outtakes of the opening panorama shots were later used by Ridley Scott for the closing moments of the original cut of the film Blade Runner (1982).

Photography

thumb|Page from The Shining screenplay highlighting the addition of the "[[All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" scene|right]]

The Shining had a very prolonged and arduous production period, often with very long workdays. Principal photography took over a year to complete, due to Kubrick's highly methodical nature. Actress Shelley Duvall frequently argued with Kubrick on set about lines in the script and her acting techniques. Nicholson was living in London with his then-girlfriend Anjelica Huston and her younger sister, Allegra, who testified to his long shooting days. Joe Turkel stated in a 2014 interview that they rehearsed the "bar scene" for six weeks and that the shoot day lasted from 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., with Turkel recollecting that his clothes were soaked in perspiration by the end of the day's shoot. He also described it as his favorite scene in the film.

For the final Gold Room sequence, Kubrick instructed the extras (via megaphone) not to talk, "but to mime conversation to each other. Kubrick knew from years of scrutinizing thousands of films that extras could often mime their business by nodding and using large gestures that look fake. He told them to act naturally to give the scene a chilling sense of time-tripping realism as Jack walks from the seventies into the Twenties|roaring twenties]]".

thumb|Jack's typewriter

thumb|A hallway in the [[Ahwahnee Hotel]]

For the international versions of the film, Kubrick shot different takes of Wendy reading the typewriter pages containing "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" in different languages. For each language, a suitable idiom was used: German (Was du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf Morgen / "Never put off till tomorrow what may be done today"), Italian (Il mattino ha l'oro in bocca / "The morning has gold in its mouth"), French (Un «Tiens» vaut mieux que deux «Tu l'auras» / "One 'here you go' is worth more than two 'you'll have it, the equivalent of "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"), Spanish (No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano / "No matter how early you get up, you can't make the sun rise any sooner.")

The door that Jack chops through with the axe near the end of the film was real; Kubrick originally shot this scene with a fake door, but Nicholson, who had worked as a volunteer fire marshal and a firefighter in the California Air National Guard, tore through it too quickly. Jack's line, "Heeeere's Johnny!", is taken from Ed McMahon's introduction to The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and was improvised by Nicholson. Kubrick, who had lived in England for some time, was unaware of the significance of the line, and nearly used a different take. Later that year, Carson would use this clip to open his 18th anniversary show.

During production, Kubrick screened David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) to the cast and crew, to convey the mood he wanted to achieve for the film.

The Guinness Book of Records gave the record for the scene with the most retakes in cinematic history to the sequence where Wendy walks backward up the stairs fending off Jack with a baseball bat, at 127 times. In July 2020, Guinness updated the record to 148 takes, for the scene where Danny and Dick Hallorann discuss the ability to shine. In the film history book Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Lee Unkrich disputes the 127 takes claim, writing, "It was reported by a crew member who wasn't even on the set when it was shot ...The shot that has the most takes in the entire film [66] that no one talks about is the big, long dolly shot that brought Jack and Wendy and the hotel manager into the Gold Ballroom at the beginning of the movie."

Steadicam

The Shining was among the early half-dozen films (after the films Bound for Glory, Marathon Man, and Rocky, all released in 1976), to use the newly developed Steadicam, a stabilizing mount for a motion picture camera, which mechanically separates the operator's movement from the camera's, allowing smooth tracking shots while the operator is moving over an uneven surface. It essentially combines the stabilized steady footage of a regular mount with the fluidity and flexibility of a handheld camera. The inventor of the Steadicam, Garrett Brown, was heavily involved with the production of The Shining. Brown has described his excitement taking his first tour of the sets, which offered "further possibilities for the Steadicam". This tour convinced Brown to become personally involved with the production. Kubrick was not "just talking of stunt shots and staircases". Rather he would use the Steadicam "as it was intended to be used — as a tool which can help get the lens where it's wanted in space and time without the classic limitations of the dolly and crane". Brown used an 18 mm Cooke lens that allowed the Steadicam to pass within an inch of walls and door frames. Brown published an article in American Cinematographer about his experience, and contributed to the audio commentary on the 2007 DVD release.

Kubrick personally aided in modifying the Steadicam's video transmission technology. Brown states his own abilities to operate the Steadicam were refined by working on Kubrick's film. For this film, Brown developed a two-handed technique, which enabled him to maintain the camera at one height while panning and tilting the camera. In addition to tracking shots from behind, the Steadicam enabled shooting in constricted rooms without flying out walls, or backing the camera into doors. Brown also discusses how the scenes in the hedge maze were shot with a Steadicam.

The soundtrack album on LP was withdrawn due to problems with licensing of the music. The LP soundtrack omits some pieces heard in the film, and also includes complete versions of pieces of which only fragments are heard in the film.

The non-original music on the soundtrack is as follows:

  1. Dies Irae segment from "Symphonie fantastique" by Hector Berlioz, performed by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind
  2. "Lontano" by György Ligeti, Ernest Bour conducting the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra (Wergo Records)
  3. "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta" by Béla Bartók, Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon)
  4. "Utrenja" – excerpts from the "Ewangelia" and "Kanon Paschalny II" movements by Krzysztof Penderecki, Andrzej Markowski conducting the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra (Polskie Nagrania Records)
  5. "The Awakening of Jacob", "De Natura Sonoris No. 1" (the latter not on the soundtrack album, Cracow Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Henryk Czyż) and "De Natura Sonoris No. 2" by Krzysztof Penderecki (Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Andrzej Markowski, Polskie Nagrania Records)
  6. "Home", performed by Henry Hall and the Gleneagles Hotel Band. By permission of Decca Record Co. Remaster by Keith Gooden & Geoff Milne, 1977. (Decca DDV )
  7. "Midnight, the Stars and You" by Harry M. Woods, Jimmy Campbell and Reg Connelly, performed by Ray Noble and his Orchestra, vocalist Al Bowlly

Segments that did not appear on the soundtrack album also include:

  1. "It's All Forgotten Now" by Ray Noble, performed by Noble and his Orchestra
  2. "Masquerade", performed by Jack Hylton and his Orchestra
  3. "Kanon" (for string orchestra) by Krzysztof Penderecki
  4. "Polymorphia" (for string orchestra) by Krzysztof Penderecki, Cracow Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Henryk Czyż

Upon their arrival at Elstree Studios, Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind were shown the first version of the film by Kubrick: "The film was a little on the long side. There were great gobs of scenes that never made it to the film. There was a whole strange and mystical scene in which Jack Nicholson discovers objects that have been arranged in his working space in the ballroom with arrows and things. He walks down and thinks he hears a voice and a ghost throws a ball back to him. None of that made it to the final film. We scored a lot of those. We didn't know what was going to be used for sure". After having something similar happen to her on A Clockwork Orange, Carlos has said that she was so disillusioned by Kubrick's actions that she vowed never to work with him again. She and Elkind had considered legal action against Kubrick, but because no formal contract was in place, they reluctantly accepted the situation. Carlos's own music was released in its near entirety in 2005 as part of her Rediscovering Lost Scores compilation.

Release

Unlike Kubrick's previous works, which developed audiences gradually through word-of-mouth, The Shining initially opened on 10 screens in New York City and Los Angeles on the Memorial Day weekend, then was released as a mass-market film nationwide within a month. The European release of The Shining a few months later was 25 minutes shorter due to Kubrick's removal of most of the scenes taking place outside the environs of the hotel.

Post-release edit

After its premiere and a week into the general run (with a running time of 146 minutes), Kubrick cut a scene at the end that took place in a hospital. The scene shows Wendy in a bed talking with Mr. Ullman, who explains that Jack's body could not be found; he then gives Danny a yellow tennis ball, presumably the same one that Jack was throwing around the hotel. This scene was subsequently physically cut out of prints by projectionists and sent back to the studio by order of Warner Bros., the film's distributor. This cut the film's running time to 144 minutes. Roger Ebert commented: