7 ms·
I agree this is super neat, but for what it's worth, the "the mirror is actually a hole in the set" technique is kind of a standard go-to in movie making. I am
by sho_hn 5y ago
I agree this is super neat, but for what it's worth, the "the mirror is actually a hole in the set" technique is kind of a standard go-to in movie making.
I am very enamored with the iconic "impossible mirror" shot in Robert Zemeckis' "Contact" instead, which used subtle CGI to brilliant effect to innovate over the practical bag of tricks. It's my single favorite effects shot in movies: https://youtu.be/avRdYf78kLk https://youtu.be/avRdYf78kLk (from 1:10 for the impatient)
- OJFord 5y agoAmazing. I do wonder if I'd actually notice just watching it (haven't seen the film) vs. it being pointed out to me though. I think I miss (just thinking 'nice cinematography', but not realising specifically why) a lot of clever stuff.
- scrollaway 5y agoFor what it's worth, i missed it when watching the movie. It just feels like there's something weird that just happened but you can't quite tell, like a nice and subtle spice in a well made dish.
- fknorangesite 5y ago> I do wonder if I'd actually notice just watching it Almost certainly not; that's the point.
- kleiba 5y agoI don't remember whether I noticed it or not when I saw the movie, but I'd like to believe I would have. It reminds be a bit of the final scene of Hitchcock's "Birds": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULxw4UDY5g8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULxw4UDY5g8 (up until 0:35)
- dotancohen 5y ago1. What reminds you of Birds? I don't see the parallels. 2. The original Birds did not have that music. I cannot believe how classic media remasters completely ruin the tone of the originals. From Star Wars, to Rust in Peace, to Birds now.
- kleiba 5y agoThe parallel is not obvious because no mirror is involved. It is the fact that camera is moving backwards in front of the actors who approach a closed door. Then Rod Taylor reaches for the handle and opens the door and the outside light shines in. How come the camera is not in the way at that point? Did it move backwards to the closed door? The answer is quite interesting. Let me know if you'd like me to spoiler it for you.
- amatecha 5y agoI remember being surprised by the effect, and totally unsure how they pulled it off. Positioning the camera in exactly the right angle to match what the moving camera was shooting? I can't even picture it. Impressive work!
- gregmac 5y agoOn the topic, another neat video covering several "impossible mirror" shots in movies (including Contact): https://youtu.be/VASwKZAUVSo https://youtu.be/VASwKZAUVSo
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- LaserDiscMan 5y agoLa Haine also contains a fairly nice use of the "mirror set extension" trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okQJPUTQMqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okQJPUTQMqA
- the_af 5y agoInteresting! In this case, was it used to avoid showing the camera?
- OJFord 5y agoSurely it's intended as a more deliberate (not technical) device - seeing his 'reflection' we're seeing him as he sees himself, his self-image. (I haven't seen the film though.)
- the_af 5y agoOh, I understand the cinematic effect, what I'm asking is why they used a trick instead of an actual mirror. I suppose because the actual mirror would have shown the camera behind, right?
- aasasd 5y agoEven for a momentary shot of a doorknob in ‘The Matrix’, the camera had to be hidden—in the jacket: https://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/matrix-doorknob-765.jpg https://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/matrix-doork...
- the_af 5y agoVery cool! I didn't know that. It's amazing all the kinds of shots that are done in movies that one would assume are trivial to accomplish, but that actually require tricks.
- lwhi 5y agoYou are correct! Without using this technique you'd have the camera in shot.
- GauntletWizard 5y agoAlso some of the best gags: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D-n0yctyGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D-n0yctyGY
- the_af 5y agoCool! I didn't know it was more widespread. I suppose the innovation here is that the actress and her double are twin sisters.
- dhosek 5y agoThey used that a whole bunch for the mirror scenes in Quantum Leap where Sam would look in the mirror and see himself as whoever he leaped into and there was someone else in the scene. That series was a boon for actors who had identical twins. The other identical twin thing I remember was an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Xander was split into two, one of him all his strengths and the other all his weaknesses. Nicholas Brendon's twin brother was used in the scenes where there were two Xanders in one shot.
- PostThisTooFast 5y agoAmen! I remember frame-advancing the LaserDisc over and over to study how they resolved the shot at the end.
- yholio 5y agoSomewhat on topic, the impossible flying camera in Soy Cuba: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjuLkJ4m-mc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjuLkJ4m-mc
- thefunnyman 5y agoThis is also pretty common in video games where a mirror is just a window into another room with a duplicate player model.
- fastball 5y agoSeems like there should be a computationally less expensive way to do that.
- chaboud 5y agoLook up “instancing” with regards to geometry on GPUs. The mesh can just be rendered twice with different transforms. That said, it often makes sense to drop some of the decorative flourishes used on the primary instance of the model due to distance, or use a different level of detail. There’s really no great way to get around needing to tell the GPU to render the triangles twice (short of rendering the view to an intermediate buffer and using that, which is still twice…)
- jjoonathan 5y agoScreen-space reflections are faster and require no new scene draws, but they won't show you "new angles" on reflected objects and they won't go around corners. Planar reflections require a new scene draw, but that's actually pretty modest: non-planar reflections require six scene-draws for a cubemap or full on raytracing. In general, lots of things in games require re-rendering the scene multiple times per frame, so game engines are really, really good at this. Shadows, projections, transparency / translucency, motion/depth blur, indirect lighting, deferred lighting, even things like hit testing (though for dependency + latency reasons that's a prime candidate for offloading to the CPU). Anything that requires less visual fidelity will have its performance tuned accordingly: fewer pixels, simpler shaders, lower LOD geometry, lower framerates. Nobody will notice if the fuzzy bounce lights are calculated once every five frames and blended. Ray tracing is conceptually simpler but (so far) slower at any given level of cleverness -- you'll often hear that it has asymptotic benefits, but those same benefits can be pulled out of rasterizers with effort comparable to what is required to make the raytracing practical. Here is a writeup of the passes you might expect to see in a modern engine: https://zhangdoa.com/posts/rendering-analysis-cyberpunk-2077 https://zhangdoa.com/posts/rendering-analysis-cyberpunk-2077 Here's an overview of a modern geometry pipeline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eviSykqSUUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eviSykqSUUw
- jboy55 5y agoThere is another set of twins used, that is the security guard who gets a full house on the coffee machine. He meets his 'double' that is actually the t-1000, who 'pokes' him through the head. The actor duo are in a few other movies, including Gremlins 2, where they aren't trying to fool the audience, but just are twins.
- Narann 5y ago> (from 1:10 for the impatient) To the impatient: The meaning of this shot depends on the first 1:09 minutes.