+515 You've always wondered how mirror reflections are shot in movies without the camera showing up in the picture, amirite?

by Anonymous 12 years ago

The actor, instead of angling his body to see his own reflection in the mirror, will and angle himself to see the camera in the reflection. The light is making a V shape from him to the mirror to the camera. And this should be obvious, but since he sees the camera in the mirror, the camera sees him in the mirror

by Anonymous 12 years ago

So, to sum it up: ANGLES.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Yes. Pretty surprised that no one else knew this, actually.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I have thought of that actually, but there are cases where this isn't possible! Remember the scene in Inception where Cobb takes Ariadne into his dream to test her skills as an architect? How do you explain the part when they are standing between two mirrors? How do they film that without the camera showing? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8q27D_RlNU

by Anonymous 12 years ago

No expert, but the mirrors aren't straight on to the camera man so perhaps he was on the immediate side. It's the V angle but instead of one end being a person, it's the other mirror. The actors standing between. Anyway, if that's not right, its pretty obvious that there were a lot of special effects in that movie. But I still think this scene could be done without them

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Sometimes in low-budget movies you can catch a glimpse of the camera/camera man in a mirror shot.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Worse comes to worse, they can always digitally remove the camera from the picture in the final editing stages...

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Magnets.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

You can just mask it out in post.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I've always been highly confused by one scene in "The Ring". One of the actors directly states in the movie, "That's a straight-on shot of a mirror. You can't do that without getting the camera in the shot" (not an exact quote, but that was his point.) And yet... "The Ring" is a movie, so CLEARLY it's possible. >3> LOGIC.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I think it's because it's shot at an angle, not head-on

by Anonymous 8 years ago