Tricky mirror shot in a recent movie(?)

[john williamson]

On my IMDB forum a thread appeared asking about cameraless mirror shots. That sparked my memory about a recent movie with said shot. As I remember, no one made a big deal about it, as probably it wasn't noticed or caught by anyone. Any ideas? I just registered today so I apologize if this has been covered before.

[John Sprung]

Not sure what you mean by "cameraless" shots??

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[john williamson]

Not sure what you mean by "cameraless" shots??

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

A shot where the camera should have been visible, but isn't. There's no offset angles..nothing.

[Mathew Rudenberg]

A shot where the camera should have been visible, but isn't. There's no offset angles..nothing.

 

if you specify the movie and scene maybe we can answer your question better.

 

For example in terminator 2 for the director's cut scene where they take the chip out of Arnie's head they used an elaborate mirrored set with no mirror and Linda Hamilton's twin sister.

 

Nowadays there's a good possibility they used greenscreen or simply roto'd out the camera...

[Valentin Farkasch]

garden state!

 

we see zack braf in the middle of a mirror and then he swings it open

it is right in the beginning of the movie

 

around 0:20

 

and I think in road to redemption is another one when he kills the guy in the bathtub but not perfectly sure

[john williamson]

garden state!

 

we see zack braf in the middle of a mirror and then he swings it open

it is right in the beginning of the movie

 

around 0:20

 

and I think in road to redemption is another one when he kills the guy in the bathtub but not perfectly sure

 

 

thanks, man.

[Edgar Dubrovskiy]

Enter The Void has a very interesting in-to-the-mirror shot.

So does La Haine - and they used very clever technique :)

[Jim Hyslop]

On my IMDB forum a thread appeared asking about cameraless mirror shots. That sparked my memory about a recent movie with said shot. As I remember, no one made a big deal about it, as probably it wasn't noticed or caught by anyone. Any ideas? I just registered today so I apologize if this has been covered before.

Well, it's not recent, but there's the scene from "Contact" where young Ellie's father has a heart attack, and Ellie runs to the bathroom to get his medication. Of course it's

 

I love that shot - I bought the DVD just so I could analyze it frame-by-frame at the end.

 

--

Jim

Edited September 17, 2010 by Jim Hyslop

[Brian Dzyak]

The two that come to mind are:

 

CONTACT - girl runs up stairs to open vanity mirror

 

INCEPTION - Ellen swings open mirrors that should reveal the camera that is shooting all of this, but there is no camera.

[Phil Rhodes]

The International has one of these in a mirrored lift. The civilians I was watching it with didn't twig it until I minutely explained what was going on...

 

P

[Brian Dzyak]

This isn't a mirror-shot, but one shot that caught me off guard was the opening shot of "Life as a House." The camera moves slowly toward a house, enters a window, goes through a room, then exits out a door. I saw the movie on DVD so the second that the camera left the room through another exit, bells went off in my head and I interrupted the movie-watching experience to go back and watch the shot frame-by-frame. I'm sure that the "specialness" of that shot didn't even register with the vast majority of audiences, but I give kuddos to the filmmakers for that one. It is very very cool. :)

[michael wilson]

I had to stop watching Peggy Sue Got Married to find out how they did this one. Its pretty brilliant.

 

[john williamson]

Well, it's not recent, but there's the scene from "Contact" where young Ellie's father has a heart attack, and Ellie runs to the bathroom to get his medication. Of course it's

 

I love that shot - I bought the DVD just so I could analyze it frame-by-frame at the end.

 

--

Jim

 

I THINK THAT'S IT..I THINK THAT'S IT!! Thanks a ton. I would never have remembered.

[Jim Hyslop]

I had to stop watching Peggy Sue Got Married to find out how they did this one. Its pretty brilliant.

 

Seemed pretty obvious to me, but then I took acting classes where we did "mirror exercises."

 

--

Jim

[Hal Smith]

I think it would work to place the camera behind a wall with a fake mirror frame in it. The set dressing on the camera's side of the wall would be what's also on the bathroom wall on the actor's side of the wall. Behind the actor would be the bathroom door and what's normally on the back side of the room. Get the perspective right (probably the camera equidistant as the actor from front and back of the mirror frame) and you could probably pull off something like a slider shot.

[Chris Millar]

Peggy Sue pretty obvious

Contact threw me for a sec then I remembered its modern ... its a comp

Garden State, camera 'hidden' in the gap in the mirror - although when it closes its pretty tight. It would be dull if were a comp.

 

maybe a combo of a snorkel type lens and a tilt.

 

Tilt especially, its stuff product photographers get up to in avoiding reflections.

[Jeremy M Lundborg]

Most recently this was used to good effect in 'Black Swan'.

 

American Cinematographer

December

P.47

Libatique: "We did as much as we could practically, but we knew there would be moments when we wanted to create seemingly unachievable shots, and for those we just removed the reflections digitally with the help of Dan Schrecker, or visual-effects supervisor and Look Effects. A good example of Look's work is the scene where Nina is rehearsing in front of a mirror, the lights go out, and her reflection starts moving independently; the camera was right where you see the reflection, but Darren wanted to get tight eye-lines, so we had to paint ourselves out in post. For other scenes, it was easier to just hide the camera or shoot from angles where you couldn't see it. We also used one-way mirrors to get a shot where we created an 'infinity reflection' of Nina sitting in front of a dressing-room mirror. We positioned Natalie between two one-way mirrors and just shot from behind them."

[Jenna Whitney]

How come movies in car scenes don't often have the rear view mirror? It's in One Hour Photo though.