Mirror, mirror on the wall … why don’t you replicate the film digicam that’s clearly pointed at you?
Welcome to The Queue — your each day distraction of curated video content material sourced from throughout the net. Today, we’re watching a video essay that explores how filmmakers make cameras disappear when scenes function mirrors.
When individuals speak about “the magic of cinema” they aren’t being cute. Filmmakers are real-deal illusionists; hiding wires, false partitions, and gaffer tape in plain sight to droop the disbelief of their viewers. Sure, inventive actions like cinema verité exit of their strategy to disassemble the extremely constructed artifice of the medium. But even films involved with the very best flights of fancy typically try to defend their viewers from the sweaty actuality of how the sausage was made.
As far as “things that will remind you you’re in a movie” are involved, nothing actually beats catching a glimpse of increase mics, cameras, or black-clad focus-pullers on-screen. It’s virtually all the time a mistake. And it all the time appears like seeing the Wizard of Oz having a lunch break behind his velour curtain. Or spying Bigfoot by the underbrush taking a leak. Sure, it could actually briefly depart you with a smug excessive. But I discover that situations the place I’m shocked that I can’t see the digicam and its crew are way more satisfying than ones the place I can.
The following video essay spotlights plenty of notable situations in films the place filmmakers used film magic to make the digicam’s reflection disappear in a shot involving a mirror. While it’s true that the majority mirror trick pictures are a results of the easy (however efficient) mixture of plates and matting, others (just like the mirror bridge scene from Inception) are liable to depart even probably the most die-hard SFX head scratching their head.
Enjoy, and pay no consideration to that man behind the scenes. No one informed him that the altered side ratio would imply he’d be in-frame.
“How Filmmakers Make Cameras Disappear | Mirrors in Movies”
Who made this?
This video essay on how filmmakers make cameras disappear in mirror pictures is by Paul E.T., an Australian YouTuber who has been at it since 2017. You can observe Paul E.T. on Twitter here. And you may subscribe to their YouTube account here.
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Related Topics: Cinematography, Special Effects, The Queue
Meg has been writing professionally about all issues film-related since 2016. She is a Senior Contributor at Film School Rejects in addition to a Curator for One Perfect Shot. She has attended worldwide movie festivals comparable to TIFF, Hot Docs, and the Nitrate Picture Show as a member of the press. In her day job as an archivist and information supervisor, she repeatedly works with bodily media and is dedicated to making sure ongoing bodily media accessibility within the digital age. You can discover extra of Meg’s work at Cinema Scope, Dead Central, and Nonfics. She has additionally appeared on plenty of film-related podcasts, together with All the President’s Minutes, Zodiac: Chronicle, Cannes I Kick It?, and Junk Filter. Her work has been shared on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, Business Insider, and CherryPicks. Meg has a B.A. from the University of King’s College and a Master of Information diploma from the University of Toronto.
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