If you’ve never tried filmmaking, you might think that the most difficult visual challenge is creating an effects-laden spectacle. Spaceships wreak havoc in space, monsters stomp major cities, animals talk and dance like Broadway stars, and more. Some kind of thing. But consider the challenges that come with just filming a scene set in a bathroom. Almost all such spaces have large mirrors, and most of the angles you can take photos from will violate the important rule cited by Youtuber Paul ET. video above: “Please don’t show the camera in the shot.”
But we’ve all seen mirrors in major movies and television series, not just in bathrooms, but in rooms used to interrogate suspects to rooms used to prepare them to go on stage. You’ve probably seen scenes in other spaces with . Additionally, the camera often casually passes in front of these non-reflective mirrors like a vampire. The techniques used to achieve shots like this are now mature enough that you might not even realize that what you’re looking at doesn’t make any visual sense. How they work is the subject of Paul ET’s investigation, starting with that episode. Detective: UK In this work, the camera drifts around a room with a one-way mirror, never reflecting in that mirror.
Another, more familiar example is: contactdirected by visual effects master Robert Zemeckis. among them early flashback sequenceIn , an adolescent version of the astronomer protagonist runs toward the rear-tracking camera and reaches to open what turns out to be a medicine cabinet in the bathroom. We should be looking into that mirror all the time, but we can’t see it yet. What we see is actually a seamless fusion of two shots, with the “empty” (i.e. bluescreen-filled) frame of the cabinet mirror showing a young woman running towards it. It is superimposed on the edge of the shot of the actress. It’s not technically easy, but it’s at least conceptually simple.
Paul ET discovered another more complex mirror shot in a cinematic masterpiece as much as Zack Snyder’s film sucker punchthis tracks all the way from one side of the dressing room mirror set to the other. “What you’re actually seeing as the camera moves is a transition from one side of the replicated set to the other,” he explains. “There are invisible cuts stitched together. This involves actresses who look exactly like each other, literally trying to mirror each other’s movements.” For Ruben Östlund, there are no such elaborate tricks. force majeure, It uses a camera built into the wall to film the bathroom mirror head-on, then digitally erased in post-production.
Although we live in an age of “post-fixing” (an instinct that has probably had an unfortunate effect on cinema), mirror shots as a whole still require a certain amount of foresight and ingenuity. It was the same with that scene in Detective: UKPaul ET simply couldn’t figure it out on his own. Seeking answers, he emailed the episode’s B-camera operator. The operator explained that the production used no blue screens or doubles and involved “a combination of well-choreographed camera work and VFX.” As a result, this shot may seem ordinary at first glance, but upon closer inspection it proves the subtle power of movie magic, or rather TV magic.
Related content:
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How Filmmakers Tell Stories: Three Insightful Video Essays Demystifying the Art of Editing, Composition, and Color
Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages ​​and cultures. His projects include the Substack newsletter books about cities and a book Stateless City: A Stroll Through Los Angeles in the 21st Century. Follow him on Twitter @Colinbemust or facebook.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
