mirror shot

[Kim Welch]

What is the best way to shoot a scene where someone is looking at themselves in a mirror without the camera being seen? I know there has to be continuity of reality and reflection. So, where is the camera? What if you want to get a veiw of the hands in the sink with the real hands and the reflection of the hands shown from the veiw of the subject?

Kim

 

[DerekEastham]

it's all about being on an angle.
If you shoot at an angle, the reflection of the camera will bounce away from the image you're recording...

I would recommend watching a lot of M. Night Shayamalan... he is brilliant with mirrors, and they are frequently used in his films.

Lighting is another key factor in mirrors as well... you also need to take care where you place your lights, and how they're directed... because they too can reflect... and you wouldn't want the light to appear natural in the room, yet unnatural in the mirror image.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection...

In other words, you point a camera dead into a mirror and you see yourself, but as you move the camera further off-axis, your reflection falls further off-camera. Longer lenses can help reduce the field of view and thus how much of the space is reflected while also allowing you to be farther back from the mirror. But the angle of reflection rule still applies.

Sometimes you can get away with being at a lower position so your reflection falls below the bottom edge of the mirror. Sometimes you can get away with the foreground subject blocking the reflection of the camera (although it also blocks the view of the camera equally.)

Anything really tricky starts to involve special effects or in some cases, hiding the camera behind a partial mirror so that what's reflected is another mirror.

Look at "Peggy Sue Got Married" -- the first and last shots. In the first, the camera dollies back from Kathleen Turner's face until it is shooting over her foreground shoulder as she sits in front of a vanity mirror -- this required a "fake" mirror (a window) and a double matching her movements to Turner's as they faced each other (think "Duck Soup"...), with all the props on the table duplicated on both sides of the "reflection".

 

[laurent.a]

For what about lighting, it's about the same...

If you want to see the face in the mirror it's not always possible to light it from behind. You usually don't have the room for a projector. Putting one on top is not very nice... The trick is to use the mirror itself as well to light the face. so the projector is somewhere in the back of the comedian, and using the mirror you set the light with the appropriate angle so it lights the face thru the mirror. It then becomes virtually in front of him (or her (I like her much better :wink: ))

 

[Digigenic]

Mirror Mirror on the Wall...who's the trickiest of them all

Mirror Mirror on the Wall...who's the trickiest of them all

With regard to the tricky special effects shots Mr. Mullen addressed in his previous post, it's becoming common practice in post to cover up cameo appearances of the DP and/or camera guy in a film by applying a "removal" effect; erasing the reflection to get a straight mirror or window shot, it's not that difficult.

I love catching a reflection of a camera in a high budget movie though, like in Casino I caught one, makes me laugh at how even little mistakes like that can still end up in the best of films.

One of the all time ultimate mirror moments was in the final fight sequence between Bruce Lee and Kien Shih (the one handed villain) in the room of mirrors for "Enter the Dragon".
I'll save the discussion of the mirrored fight sequence between Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Wizard Beast in Conan the Destroyer for another time... 8)

 

[laurent.a]

I love the kubrick's Lolita opening scene where he plays so well with mirrors

 

[MarkG]

Lighting is another key factor in mirrors as well... you also need to take care where you place your lights,

Oh, tell me about it... a few years back I shot a movie for a friend in a hairdresser's salon, which had mirrors up and down the walls. From any place in the salon you could see pretty much every other place reflected in some mirror or other in the shot. We had to be real careful about positioning lights, camera and people, and used a number of unusual camera angles to hide things we couldn't move.

In general, though, I always find deliberate mirror shots distracting: I spend more time wondering where they've hidden the camera than following the story... I know a lot of directors like them, but I'm far from convinced that they're a good idea. One time I have found them useful was when shooting in a nightclub bathroom where we just couldn't get a wide enough shot with the camera we were using, until we realised we could shoot the actors' reflections in the mirror and get them all in that way.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I've never been shy to do an "arty" mirror shot!

On my last film, inspired by the use of mirrors in small rooms in "In the Mood for Love", we tried some similar angles. We did one scene of a person crying in a steamed-up bathroom by shooting his reflection in the foggy mirror with the focus on the water droplets running down the mirror, so he was out of focus, mostly heard rather than seen.