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Mirror effect with two characters


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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!

post-70152-0-30840700-1461454843_thumb.jpg

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I would think option 2 is the only way, only don't use glass, just an empty mirror frame. Google "Lucille Ball Harpo Marx" for an example. It will probably take a lot of rehearsing to get the timing perfect. If there's no sound, you could have a metronome going or someone calling out when to start moves. The key to the illusion would be establishing a "reflection" in the mirror and that would be up to the set department, e.g: having a lamp or something behind the main character and having an identical item placed on the other side of the frame as it's "reflection." If you see around the edges of the mirror frame (it looks like you're planning on using a free standing mirror and not one mounted to a wall) you could probably fix that with mattes in post. I've never done this effect, but that's how I would probably approach it.

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