How Filmmakers Make Cameras Disappear | Mirrors in Movies: Part II

It's January 14th, 2021. I released a video on faulty mirrors in movies and people kind of like it. Except for the fact that I chose to include three incredibly ingenious mirror shots at the start of the video and then I just never referenced them again. Well today we're going to fix that and then some. Welcome to mirrors and movies part two. Let's start with the scary one first. Undoubtedly one of the most unnerving mirror shots out there. This particular effect in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan involves really two elements to make it sing and thanks to a BTS breakdown of the scene by Look FX we know exactly what those two elements are. The first is this hero plate which has the camera placed cleverly behind a one-way mirror which allows the camera and the camera operator to remain hidden while preserving the infinite reflections we see in the shot. The second is a green screen element of Natalie Portman's character performing her action on cue as the camera mimics the move from that original plate. With these two elements and the removal of this reflection the filmmakers are then able to combine the hero plate with the green screen element to create this truly unnerving moment. And Black Swan is peppered with tons of truly clever mirror moments like this incredibly simple technique. How would you like to use the music you want in the content you make? Like for instance the exact tracks they used in the latest season of Stranger Things. Well you can with today's sponsor Musicbed. With Musicbed you can choose from over 40,000 songs expertly curated into intuitive playlists including playlists from some of your favourite filmmakers and curators. Look, even I've got a playlist. Yay! Or better yet use their search function. Its built-in filters allow you to quickly narrow down tracks that fit with what vibe you're looking for from genre to mood and even instrument. I've been using Musicbed for years now. It's been one of the key elements of my process that's helped my videos stand out. So help elevate your content too with the piece of the process that is arguably the most important, good music. So hear the difference for yourself and sign up for a free account using my link below and use the code PAULAT at checkout to receive one month free when you purchase an annual subscription. Thanks to Musicbed for sponsoring this video. Directed by Alfonso Cuaron, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban could be the best Harry Potter film of the lot but it is the best one and if you do just disagree you may meet me at a open field of your choice and challenge me to a duel. I mean what other entry has a shot like this? It's smooth, it's seamless and best of all it's actually pretty damn simple. It's actually just two shots and some really well choreographed camera work and VFX but let's move above to get a better idea of what exactly is going on in each shot. So shot one is the shot you see as the scene begins. The camera operator moves through the crowd towards the wardrobe and instead of a mirror in the wardrobe it's just a whole lot of green screen. Tracking continues until said green screen fills the frame entirely. Which brings us to shot two where they flip the camera around 180 degrees and film the action coming from the other direction towards the students essentially acting as the reflection you see in the mirror. Now the wardrobe could very well be CGI but it still wouldn't change the fundamentals of the effect. They'd still need these two tracking shots to make it work whether the wardrobe was practical or added in after. So you combine shot one with shot two remembering to flip shot two horizontally and boom you have this stellar mirror transition that not only opens the scene but also closes it beautifully. In fact it's so beautiful I decided to recreate it. A bit of helping of shot one, sprinkle of shot two, combine and voila. Its simplicity is almost criminal unlike our next shot. Christopher Nolan's inception film 2010 is full of mind-bending visual effects but there's one particular shot above all the rest that's puzzled me for years. For the better part of a decade the way this shot was executed was not widely known. People had their theories like what is page stepping over here and here. There was also this one piece of b-roll from the set in France that conjured up more questions than answers. But all was not lost. Enter my copy of Inception on blu-ray. No no sorry the special features basically talked about every other trick shot in the movie besides the mirror effect. I guess that would have been too easy. No it wouldn't be until April of 2021 when an article is published over a website called inverse.com. Why was it a big deal? Well because they had spoken with members of the VFX team that had made all of this possible. Now there's no more than 300 words dedicated to this particular shot but that doesn't matter because it also has this photo. And what is insane about this effect although maybe not surprising is the fact that Nolan went with real mirrors. According to the VFX supervisor Peter Bebb it was huge. I think it weighed about two and a half tons and I think it was about 15 feet across. It was that large that it wobbled, something the VFX team at DNEG had to replicate when they removed the cameraman and crew members from the reflection. And that was the easy part. Bebb goes on to say that the VFX team then had to recreate the reflection of the city in 3D from still photography references of the area and then match that recreation with the changing angle of the mirror as Paige's character moves it into place. The attention to detail in recreating the wobble and the dents is impeccable, something visual effects supervisor Andy Lockley says is crucial. All these little imperfections and little peculiarities are the things that really help sell CG as being real. You don't want the surfaces of objects to be computer clear, you want all these dinks and dents and ripples. And when you look at the final result it's no wonder the team won best visual effects at the Oscars in 2011. And the Oscar goes to Inception. Paul Franklin, Chris Cobbold, Andy Lockley. Which brings us to this absolute doozy. Out of the three I featured at the start of the first Mirrors and Movies video, this shot was the most bemusing to most. And I have to agree. Unlike Inception though, the special features on the Triangle Blu-ray goes pretty in-depth into this specific shot. But I'll be honest, I sat at my computer screen for a good 20 minutes still completely dumbfounded until this isn't a mirror at all. Let's break it down. So director Christopher Smith was actually inspired by a similar shot in the 1961 drama Mystery last year at Maranbad. But he wanted to take it a step further. When we watched that movie myself and Bob, I'd seen it when I was in film school and watched it again. There's a shot in it where you think you're going to go through a mirror. Now as it is, you don't. You turn and you face the characters in the room. And I remember seeing it when I was about 18. Why didn't you just go right through the mirror? That would have been a really good trick. And so they did. When Melissa George's character approaches the mirror, what you're actually looking at is Melissa George and a stunt double walking towards each other in almost perfect harmony. Which means what you're looking at is not a mirror, but a doorway, which is dividing a duplicated set, both mirror images of each other. And once you know that fact, the tiny differences between the two actors' movements start to become noticeable. But I do mean tiny. I mean, look at that head turn. That is basically perfect. Okay, but then what happens here? How exactly does this cameraman move through there? The answer? Carpenters. Ladies and gentlemen. No, not the band. I mean actual carpenters. Once the actors reach their mark here, this crew member lurking in the corner is now on standby to, on cue, carefully slide this cupboard over and out of the way, cleverly creating a space for the cameraman to now move through and out into the mirrored version. Completing the effect. Oh, and don't forget the smudges. Digital smudges. They're the key ingredient that tricks your brain into thinking that there's something here between the two actors. They did it in contact, they did it in Prisoner of Azkaban, and they've nailed it here as well. In fact, all four of these shots are truly special. Making your eyes believe in something you know is impossible. That's real movie magic. So, just remember, the next time you watch Inception and this scene comes on, Christopher Nolan himself is actually just chilling right there.