For example, in the opening scene of The Truman Show, we see Truman Burbank staring straight into a mirror. We’re watching from his point-of-view, but for some reason, I can’t see the camera filming directly at the mirror!
I’ve always wondered about this, since lots of different shows and movies have this sort of effect. I assumed it was filmed at a very slight angle, but it’s hard to imagine for this example, since Jim Carrey’s staring dead-on into the mirror, as is the camera…
How did they film this… is it some sort of camera trick with a green screen?
It predates green screen (Robert Montgomery did it in The Lady in the Lake in 1947. Usually, they use the angle trick. It’s possible that more modern films use the green screen, though.
In some scenes like this, the actor may just be looking straight into the camera itself, and they make it so it seems like he’s looking at himself. Just a WAG
I’m 99% sure that in The Truman Show they are just shooting straight into a frame that looks like the mirror, and Carrey is standing behind it.
Other times, the mirror can be just slightly angled so that the camera’s reflection doesn’t appear. The actor looks straight into the camera, not at his/her own reflection, and the illusion is created. You can even get over-the-shoulder shots this way, with the right angles.
Green screen can be used, and these days it’s not as expensive as it once was. But the first two techniques are easier and cheaper and probably used far more often.
Probably the rarest is the duplicate set behind the mirror. If you imagine the famous mirror scene in the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup, but done seriously, that’s the concept. It was done in a scene that was apparently deleted from Terminator 2. Sarah Connor is trying to “fix” the Terminator, seated in front of a mirror, and the camera tracks behind the two characters looking straight into the mirror. If it really were a mirror, there would be no way the camera wouldn’t have been visible.
But in fact, there was a whole duplicate, mirror-image set behind a sheet of glass, and director James Cameron used Linda Hamilton’s twin sister Leslie, and a puppet dupe of Ah-nold sitting in the chair. Obviously, the actors on each side have to mirror their movements, but in a brief shot this isn’t hard.
I’ve seen it relatively recently in another 1940s movie, too, but I can’t recall the title. (It wasn’t Lady in the Lake.)
If you use the angle-trick, it will still APPEAR as if the actor is staring dead-on into the mirror, even if the angle is not so slight. Say the actor is looking at the mirror at a 45 degree angle. The camera is also pointing at the mirror, at an opposite 45 degree angle. Due to reflections, the camera is pointing directly at the actor’s face, and the actor is looking directly at the lens… in the mirror.
It’s very admirably and elaborately done in Rouben Mamoulian’s version of Dr. Jeckyll and Mister Hyde (the one with Freedric March), possibly the most impressive shot in a film filled with clever and impressive shots, and it’s worth seeing the movie for that sequence alone.
The camera shows the world from Jeckyll’s point of view in one long, unbroken shot, starting with him looking down at his hands as he plays the organ, looking at the door when his butler knocks and tells him that his coach is there, getting up, following his butler down the hall, turning and looking straight into the mirrorat himself as the butler comes around and puts his coat on (And it looks exactly like the butler we just saw – either he really hustled, or they found a perfect body double), then turning, going down the hallway and out the door.
Of course, in a lot of movies theey use effects – matting it in in older movies, digitially adding it in more recent movies (The Matrix is filled with these – from Morbius’ glasses to the reflecting ladle “that doesn’t exist” to the rear-view mirror on Trinity’s motorcycle.)
Francis Ford Coppola used this in the ending scene of “Peggy Sue Got Married”, pulling back through the mirror from the second set full of duplicate actors (viewed from behind) to the real set.
I read this post yesterday and while shopping at woolies stared at a mirror… eureka… I had to register as a user and post my first post (applause). If it was a framed mirror, could you have the actor standing (for arguments sake) at +10 degrees to the face of the mirror, and the camera at -10 degrees to the face of the mirror. The camera would see the actor in the mirror with all the background (and no camera). However this would make the mirror look in perspective - to overcome this, create a mirror frame that had the side closest to the camera slightly shorter/thiner, while the frame edge furthest would be longer/thicker, giving the appearance of a straight rectangular mirror…