reflections

Lake Films

Lake Films

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Hey. I'm doing a short where the character looks into a mirror and sees a different person looking back at him. Any ideas on how that can be achieved? I thought maybe split screen...I tried green screen but it's tricky and usually looks fake. Any ideas...?
 
you can try shooting off angle with a locked down camera. Have actor #1 do his thing in the mirror, making sure he/she is a bit further back then your mirror image actor will be. Shoot that, then have your "reflection" do the same thing, only a little closer so his image is slightly bigger.

you can then do a cheap garbage matte between the two shots. Using the slightly larger reflection of your second person to mask over top of the other actor.

but if there is a lot movement ie: arm waving or whatever, then that way becomes convoluted and even more work.

You could always just shoot it like I describe above, and do some painting work after to remove unwanted actor from the scene.
 
It may help if you could put up a small clip of what you have so far. This will help ,me at anyrate, get my heaed around the logistics of the shot. even a sketch would help.
 
It's basically a man looking into a mirror and what he sees is an evil clown staring back at him. Haven't shot anything yet in the room.
 
Ha ha love it, it is an evil clown flick!! And this isn't the 'evil' one....


 

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Loki's idea sounds prety good. But I'll bet you could simplify it by just dooing a wipe.

Lock down the camera (and all settings in munal!) in an OTS, but so that the actor in front of the mirror doesn't get in front of the mirror. Shoot each actor both the real one, and the reflected one (and make sure that the reflection works properly for this obviously).
Then in post do a vertical whipe, seperatign teh actor in front of the mirror on one side, and the mirror - with evil reflection - on the other.


One tool to help shooting would be to play the tape of the first actor on a monitor somewhere (like behind the actor via the mirror) for the 2nd actor to help stay in sync.

- Mikko
 
With some experimenting, the split screen thing worked like a charm, now to shoot it tomorrow. Funny my wife looking into the mirror and my mug looking back at her. Wives are good for something, ssshhhhhh!
 
How about using a fake mirror (just a frame with no mirror). Mount it on a piece of drywall that you can prop up, cut a hole in it the size of the mirror opening and then just put the actors on each side.
 
Yeah -- from what I've heard of Quantum Leap behind the scenes info (where Sam would always leap into a new body and see the other person's face in the mirror) they would often use no mirror at all, but rather identicial (but reversed) sets on either side of the hole in the wall. The only challenge then is to match the motion of each actor.
 
Once there on set, as always, things changed. With the camera at just the right angle over actor #1's shoulder, I was able to sit actor #2 next to #1 slightly back. It looked great, they both were in the mirror looking at each other! It's for the best as messing with the split screen is a hairy process if not done perfect.
 
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