Mirror shot in Contact (1997)

moonshieldmedia · Jul 5, 2012

I was just rewatching the movie Contact and this shot blew my mind.
Definitely didn't notice it when I originally saw the movie in my early teens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCTGdhXCSks

Cracker Funk · Jul 5, 2012

Whatever effect they used, it's absolutely seamless. If anybody knows how they did it, I'm more than a little curious.

gebo · Jul 5, 2012

First they shot the scene with the girl running thorugh the corridor until she stretches her arm to open the door.
Second they shot the girl from the back opening the door. The door probably had a blue or green screen instead of a mirror, where they added the first shot.
When she reaches for the door look at her sleeve, one has an orange sleeve and the other does not.

gebo · Jul 5, 2012

Here's the effect commented by Robert Zemeckis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTlGS31-uAs&feature=re%C2%ADlated

Cracker Funk · Jul 5, 2012

Very cool.

knightly · Jul 5, 2012

I can't figure it out at all... dumbfounded.

knightly · Jul 5, 2012

Oh, the commentary says it all... although, I can't imagine how many takes had to be done to get those reaches to match that well. That's the bit that threw me.

Alcove Audio · Jul 5, 2012

One of my personal top twenty films. Pretty much the same team that did "Forrest Gump."

jax_rox · Jul 5, 2012

If you look closely as she stretches her hand to the mirror door as well, you can see that it doesn't quite match perfectly.

Props to the filmmaking team though, it is a cool shot. And, definitely props to the camera operator, doing that running shot on a vistavision camera wouldn't have been easy - they're not the lightest things in the world.