I am going to be filming in close quarters with lots of mirrors on the walls and I was wondering how do hollywood filmakers keep cameras out of the shot when filming into mirrors or keeping out the cameras reflection. Do they edit it out or is there some other method to this?
Filming Near Mirrors
- Thread starter boarderjosh10
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Masking, I think it's called. Your NLE program should have some capabilities in this. Take one shot of a mirror reflecting nothing but wall, cut and paste that shot over the mirror that's showing the camera, lights, crew, and what have you. If you move the camera it will be harder to mask but not impossible. The mirror room shot in the second Conan movie is a prime example. An actor totally surrounded by mirrors.
Depends on the set up, how many mirrors what kinds of shots you need. Mirrors are tricky, no doubts there.
Depends on the set up, how many mirrors what kinds of shots you need. Mirrors are tricky, no doubts there.
without doing it digitally, it's all about angles. Position the mirrors at such an angle that the camera can only see the room and/or actor and not itself. This also means that when an actor looks into a mirror they probably won't be seeing themselves.
An old trick is to cover the camera, tripod and operator in black cloth or whatever the predominate color of the room is, that way of a piece if you or the camera show up, then they'll just be a black blob.
Scott
Scott
The only problem is that you won't be able to move the camera around TOO much or it will likely end up reflecting in a mirror.
Hmmm....
You know.. you might be able to shoot through a "two way mirror" so the reflection of the camera would end up being another reflected image. But then there would have to be a reason that there's a mirror on the normally unseen side of the room (or "forth wall" for theater people) that keeps moving around if you used a moving camera, UNLESS that was a very large mirror that allowed the camera to be trucked left & right and craned up and down behind it.
In theory I think it would work.. in practice somehow it sounds expensive and a major pain.
Hmmm....
You know.. you might be able to shoot through a "two way mirror" so the reflection of the camera would end up being another reflected image. But then there would have to be a reason that there's a mirror on the normally unseen side of the room (or "forth wall" for theater people) that keeps moving around if you used a moving camera, UNLESS that was a very large mirror that allowed the camera to be trucked left & right and craned up and down behind it.
In theory I think it would work.. in practice somehow it sounds expensive and a major pain.
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