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The Impossible Mirror Scene in 'Contact'
- jordache 6y agosuch a clever shot. Using subtle everyday elements in compelling way.
- bondarchuk 6y agoDon't read/watch this if you intend to see the movie! It works much better in context and as a surprise.
- godelmachine 6y agoThis is a very important comment. Will start watching the movie right away if you say it’s good enough? Edit - is this the movie? -> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film)
- chaoticmass 6y agoIt's very good.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- stronglikedan 6y agoIt's a little long, but entertaining and interesting. They could have told the same story in 45 less minutes though.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- erpellan 6y agoBoth the movie and the original book are, IMO, great. The science in the book is possibly more consistent and is a 'better' story. I rewatch the movie about once every couple of years on average.
- godelmachine 6y agoIs this the movie? -> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film)
- fthiess 6y agoYes, that's the movie.
- netsharc 6y agoOh my god dude, learn to figure shit out yourself instead of spamming your question in everyone's replies. The second paragraph of the linked article tells you the year, main actress, and director of the movie, compare that to the movie described in your Wikipedia link to get the answer.
- yashap 6y agoYes, that’s the movie, and I think it’s worth watching. To compare it to a more modern movie, I think Arrival was inspired a fair bit by Contact. If Arrival is up your alley, you’ll probably like Contact too.
- JadeNB 6y ago> To compare it to a more modern movie, I think Arrival was inspired a fair bit by Contact. Do you think Chiang's story was based on Contact (movie or book), or only that the movie was? Neither of those seems likely to me—more just a case of two authors independently writing about similar themes than of direct inspiration—but I haven't seen Contact for some time, and never read the book.
- fredski42 6y agoRead the book! It’s different and, imho, better, although the movie is very good as well.
- yashap 6y agoI’ve only seen the movies, but my understanding is that they reasonably closely reflect the books, at least in terms of major themes and plot points. Based on timelines, my guess is that Chiang’s novella was inspired by Sagan’s novel. The stories are far from identical, but there are lots of similar themes - aliens sharing knowledge with us, the challenges of deciphering their language, world governments and extremists acting somewhat as antagonists, the interleaving of the protagonist’s personal life/family with all this. I could easily be wrong too, but I certainly got Contact vibes when watching Arrival.
- JadeNB 6y ago> I’ve only seen the movies, but my understanding is that they reasonably closely reflect the books, at least in terms of major themes and plot points. Arrival is a good movie, but it's radically different from Story of your life, which is an intensely interior novel. It also substitutes a familiar time-travel plot for the, to me, radically novel linguistic approach to (not really but, for want of a better word) time travel that the novel creates. > The stories are far from identical, but there are lots of similar themes - aliens sharing knowledge with us, the challenges of deciphering their language, world governments and extremists acting somewhat as antagonists, the interleaving of the protagonist’s personal life/family with all this. I agree that these points are in common (although I'd argue that the role of world governments, while still important, is more peripheral in Story of your life), but they seem like quite common sci-fi tropes to me. Perhaps Contact is the ur-text for the trope after all ….
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- bbojan 6y agoI always thought they recorded this scene by having the camera pointed to a mirror the whole time (at a slight angle of course, so it's not in the frame). Turns out the effect was much more complicated to film than that.
- lmilcin 6y agoThe biggest miracle of this is operator running backwards with camera rig.
- baxtr 6y agoYou should check-out filmup if you’re interested in the art of film making: https://twitter.com/filmupco https://twitter.com/filmupco It's really interesting how scenes are actually filmed.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoIt isn't just a simple blue screen composite because distortion from the bevel on the glass has been simulated too.
- jordache 6y agoyeah ha, it's not your everyday weather map bluescreen.
- egfx 6y agoSpoiler: This is the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life period. This moment in the beginning draws you into the movie and then you have the intense effect of immersion throughout the film, and in the end the unreal scene where Ellie touches the universe bubble. It warps up leaving you with a perfect quality of awe and wander. The whole movie is a perfect trifecta of trifecta’s.
- jordache 6y agoNo doubt the excellent book it was based on had an overwhelming contribution to the overall success of the movie.
- hirundo 6y agoThe book is even better. As great a science educator as Carl Sagan was, I think he was a better science fiction author. I only wish he wrote more of it. Ellie makes a mind bending mathematical discovery at the end of the novel that puts the whole story in an even vaster context. The movie skipped it. It's almost as egregious as Peter Jackson skipping the scouring of the shire.
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- fossuser 6y agoYeah - it's cliche to say the book is better, but in this case it's not just better - the movie is an inversion of the book’s core idea. In the book they send an elected representative group in the ship. She's gathering evidence at the end to confirm her story and persuade others that it's not a mass delusion (of which the mathematical discovery is a part). In the movie Jodie Foster cries and says they have to take it on faith - basically the exact opposite of the book's message.
- branko_d 6y ago> In the movie Jodie Foster cries and says they have to take it on faith. Except they don't have to... there are hours of static from her camera, something that should not be possible if she spent only a fraction of a second out of contact.
- mdoms 6y agoWhy is a film focused website still using gifs for displaying sequences? Video on the web is a solved problem and it's better then gif in every possible way, especially for full color full motion live action.
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- zwlee90 6y agoi'm glad it uses a gif. it's straight to the point, it plays in a loop, you can't control the playback, cant pause it, cant seek forward, cant tell how long it lasts. if it used a video, its likely the developer of the site would be encouraged to add: a beginning countdown timer before the clip played (video will start in 3, 2, 1, .. you arent sure if the clip has audio or not so you hit Pause and never see the clip), a distracting progress bar showing how long the clip lasts, messing up the anticipation for not knowing when the clip ends, killing all suspense.. and finally, about 1 second before the video is over, a little popup that shows Whats Playing Next, and a countdown timer starts playing for the next clip. This is best case scenario.. worst would be a 2 minute ad before the video starts. video on the web isn't a 'solved problem'. What if I want to play a video that uses indexed color? No video codec I know of supports that. Can I trust that the video I just encoded in h264 with ffmpeg will play on the web, or, or do I need to test first to see if it will play? Will it work on all browsers? Is my codec listed on https://cconcolato.github.io/media-mime-support/ https://cconcolato.github.io/media-mime-support/ ? and on and on. the simplicity of a gif makes perfect sense here.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mdoms 6y ago> it's straight to the point, it plays in a loop, you can't control the playback, cant pause it, cant seek forward, cant tell how long it lasts All of this can be achieved with video.
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- cortic 6y ago[flagged] just wanting to join in.
- matsche 6y agoThe guys from corridor crew did a great break down of that amazing scene [0] [0] https://youtu.be/pTl42COCNaM?t=255 https://youtu.be/pTl42COCNaM?t=255
- interestica 6y agoIt's not just a compelling shot. It uses the door frames that enter the viewframe to completely trick your brain: suddenly its not a door frame but the frame to the mirror. So, it's entrance doesn't immediately break the illusion. Also the mirror has to be more than just bluescreen - there's distortion in it too as it moves. The extended edition of Terminator 2 also has an impossible mirror shot -- and it achieves it with an almost hilarious solution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYTOK89w8h0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYTOK89w8h0 It's literally a window with Linda Hamilton's twin sister on the other side performing rehearsed/synchronized movements. edit: just found out she passed away a few months ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr-RRixkRhI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr-RRixkRhI https://movieweb.com/leslie-hamilton-freas-gearren-dead-terminator-2/ https://movieweb.com/leslie-hamilton-freas-gearren-dead-term...
- dmurray 6y agoTerminator 2 also used another set of twins. When the T-1000 mimics the security guard, they're both seen on screen simultaneously in a couple of scenes. Not CGI but identical twin actors.
- fortran77 6y agoI'm impressed that the Terminator's CPU wasn't covered in thermal paste! How do they cool it?
- tehjoker 6y agoIt's future technology and runs on super low voltage I suppose.
- gruez 6y agoTransistors have gotten more efficient, but that doesn't mean CPUs' TDPs have decreased. At least for desktop CPUs they've mostly stayed the same or even gone up: the Pentium 4 "PresHot" from 2005 had a system power consumption of 233W whereas the i9-10900k from 2020 has a package power consumption of 254W.
- bendergarcia 6y agoThis is one of my all time favorite movies. I’ve seen it probably 30 times and it is always just as good. A lovely lovely story. As others mentioned, Arrival is similar and that is also a top movie for me.
- flubert 6y agoI'm apparently not a very attentive movie watcher. I've seen Contact several times, and nothing struck me as odd about this mirror scene until this article pointed out the obvious. Or maybe I become to engrossed in the story to notice these types of artifacts? Anyone have another favorite instance of subtle(?) movie making magic that a casual observer might have overlooked? And I wonder if the filmmakers would consider that good or bad that I missed this ingenious tidbit.
- lisper 6y agoThere is a boatload of stuff that you can't really appreciate until you've tried to make a movie yourself. When you've actually gone through the process of setting up a shot and looking at the horrible result you get a much deeper appreciation for what it takes to make something that looks even half-way non-amateurish, let lone smooth and polished. The thing that always drops my jaw is the settings of period pieces, particularly ones that have a lot of vehicles and old buildings in them. I know it's mostly CGI nowadays, but the quality is just ridiculous nowadays. I can't tell what is CGI any more, and I know what to look for. (The movie I made about 15 years ago that was my substitute for film school: http://graceofgodmovie.com/ http://graceofgodmovie.com/)
- webmobdev 6y agoI can appreciate what you said - I accidently learned that just keeping the camera still and not moving it around much drastically improves the home videos I shoot.
- lisper 6y agoYep. Another one I wish more people would act on: always shoot movies in landscape mode. There's a reason widescreen is a thing.
- combatentropy 6y agoNo, I think you're the ideal audience member. To become so engrossed in the movie that you notice no artifact is the goal of most moviemakers. (I've studied filmmaking for 30 years.) The same director, Robert Zemeckis, made Cast Away. There's a scene where Tom Hanks has removed the tape from a videocassette and tied strips of it to a tree, as streamers, to tell him when the wind changes direction. The strips of tape are blowing in the wind, and slowly they start blowing over to the other side, to show that the wind has finally changed direction. (He needs to know this as part of his plan to sail away.) Anyway, the tape was all computer animation! I guess they couldn't get it to act how they wanted with real tape and some fans. So they painstakingly animated it, and I would have never known, had I not heard it on the behind-the-scenes commentary.
- relix 6y agoThis reminds me of another impressive shot with a steadicam on a segway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3TBvJUtuHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3TBvJUtuHs Halfway through the video you can see how it was done. Notice the "focus puller" running next to the camera, also mentioned in the original article. The focus puller is a person holding a rotary knob which wireless adjusts the focus length of the camera. While the cameraman moves the camera around, the focus puller adjusts the focus so that the subject is always kept in focus. It impresses me how well they can do this.
- xref 6y agoAwesome thanks that’s really helpful! Reading the article I had to google what a “focus puller” was, like did they have their hand on the lens turning the focus wheel the whole shot down the hallway? That video explains it much better. Though I’m not sure why in Contact the focus puller had to be painted out of the entire shot, maybe they couldn’t get behind the camera in the hallway?
- dylan604 6y agoWhen I saw this shot in the theater, my jaw hit my lap. The original DVD 2 disc set for 'Contact' should be required material for film students.
- mintyc 6y agoJodie Foster knows how to pick a great movie. Both Contact and Anna and the king are right up there with the best.