Sure, we’re all aware of the blue screen trick which, in some cases, has become a green screen. But, two questions:
a) How was this done in the 1960’s era?
b) How could one wrestle their own double on a TV show (from any era) so seamlessly?
Seeing double,
a) I don’t think they used any screen, blue or green, in the 60s. They just filmed the actor standing on the left, cut, film the same actor standing on the right. Edit those two shots together and you have same guy talking to himself.
b) They just used another actor with the same build. And the double is always filmed from the back so you never see his face.
Those are just my WAGs. I’m sure other Dopers will correct any wrongs.
Of course, “The Patty Duke Show” with identical cousins and “The Parent Trap” are canonical examples of pre-green screen doubles played by one person.
Yeah, there’s a LOT of simply shooting one character talking from the left, cut to the other character talking from the right. Plus you get a body double but don’t shoot the face.
You can have more expensive shots that actually show the faces of both characters by splicing two shots together and hiding the seam with some sort of visual element on the set to make the break look less obvious. So the two characters could stand next to each other with a tree or a floor lamp between them, and the edge of the lamp is where the film was cut together.
One other technique is to only expose half the film. Keep the camera motionless and re-film with the character moved and the other half of the film now blocked. No seam.
Watch Buster Keaton’s “The Playhouse.” It was done in 1921, with Keaton playing an entire audience. It used the rewinding technique flex727 mentions, but what makes it truly remarkable was that the camera was cranked by hand.
Another pre-television example is Bette Davis is A Stolen Life.
Since the effect was expensive, films that used the identical twin theme had a lot of shots over the shoulder of one person and showing the other.
They still use the over-the-shoulder technique today. In fact, the only difference these days is they have a more seamless composite technique, i.e. digital tools. Otherwise the method is pretty much exactly the same, and in fact they rarely have a need to use greenscreen for it. Check out Ricky and Mickey on the “Age of Steel” episodes of Doctor Who.
For the record, I wanted to add that wikipedia states thta other colors can be used which offer a range of advantages. Here’s a link: Blue screen - Wikipedia
There’s also an ancient and probably never used anymore technique of filming the scene, then projecting it behind the actor, having him act in front of it, and filming that. That’s what was done to create a giant hand effect in some old black and white movie we had to watch in film class.
Neat! I didn’t know that.
Didn’t they use this effect in Willy Wonka when Mike is shunk? When he talks to his mother, it looks like he’s talking to an image projected onto a screen.
That’s called Rear Projection, and James Cameron has used that several times, notably in Aliens and Terminator 2, in order to have the actors seem like they’re really present when a big (model) explosion happens, such as when the drop ship crashes in Aliens.