Mirror effect with two characters

[Claudia Fleege]

Hello,

Need help with a mirror shot we need to achieve for an upcoming short film.

The idea is that the main character looks herself in the mirror and sees someone else in the mirror's reflection. The two characters touch each other's hands (main character in front of the mirror and the other person in the mirror's reflection) and then they touch their foreheads against each other.

The camera is placed on the mirror's and main character's left side and is shot in a close-up or medium close-up, fixed shot. The scene will be lit as night. The mirror is oval-shaped and placed in the middle of a room.

We have been thinking about two options:

1. Shooting with a real mirror. Actors act their parts separately in front of the mirror, and we also shoot the mirror empty with no-one in front of it. In post the reflection of the other person and the main character will be masked out of their own shots and placed in the "empty" mirror shot.

Problems: Acting is harder and need to be carefully timed. Is it possible to mask out the persons and make them into one shot? Split screen not possible because the actors touch each other / overlap each other.

2. Using see through glass instead of mirror glass and having the actors act the scene out at the same time. Problems: Light reflections and actors reflections can be seen on the glass. Does it look like see-through glass and not mirror glass?

What do you think about our two options? How could they be accomplished? Or do you have some better idea how this shot could be done?

I have attached two "storyboard" pictures for you to see what sort of shot we are trying to accomplish.

Thank you very much for any help!

[David Mullen ASC]

Definitely go for the second option, you could try non-reflective glass like for picture frames or no glass. Look at the opening of "Peggy Sue Got Married" where they did this same trick. One thing that helped was doubling objects near the "mirror" on both sides, like a table lamp next to the mirror.