question on camera tricks

[Daniel-B]

Well, I don't know how they do it in movies, but I can tell you how I would do it. I would film the actor looking through and open window. Then I would add a CG window pane and glass reflection. Not too hard to do.

[-Vormav-]

That's what I was thinking of too. I just didn't know if there was some other way to do it, some trick with camera transitions or something.
I guess I just never really stopped to think that the windows in those scenes could be CG'd when watching the movies - they look real enough. But I suppose it could just be really easy to make the windows look so realistic...

[bartrobinson]

There are two ways it can be done. The older, practical way to do it is to start filming the sequence, stop once the camera is just outside the glass, add or remove the glass, then continue filming from there. The second more technical and flexible way to do it is to film the sequence without the window in place, then track the footage and composite a CG window in place.

[Anthony Thorne]

I've seen this in a couple of movies recently.

In BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF, it's done at the start. The camera moves forward 'through' the window of a castle. It's a mixture of two shots, with a 'ripple' onscreen when the camera hits the glass.

It's also done in CONTACT, when we see Jodie Foster's character at a young age. In that sequence though the window is wide open and we can see inside it from the beginning. The fimmakers mention on the commentary track that they simply shot and composited the two different scenes together, so the outside of the house is the exterior of one shot, whilst the bedroom through the window is the interior from another.

[jussing]

There's a really clumsy shot like this in THE PEACEMAKER, where they fade from one set of curtains to another: exterior crane shot down to window, close up of the curtains - fade to curtains with the same pattern, but obviously not the same shot - and then the camera moves inside. (they could be the same curtains, but a cut from crane to steadicam, or they could be two completely different sets of curtains, one on locations in Croatia, and another in a US studio :shrug: )

There's also another juicy shot from Contact, which is not exactly the same thing, but a bit more complicated:

The camera -- apparently -- tracks backwards with the young Jodie running for the bathroom (to get her father's medicine). She then sticks her hand up towards the camera. And then her REAL hand comes from BEHIND the camera, and opens the cupboard with a mirror, and it turns out the thing we first saw was just the reflection in the mirror -- which would be impossible to film because of the long backtracking of the camera.

Nifty. :)

What Lies Beneath also has a nice shot of Michel Pfeiffer (I think) lying on the floor, and then the camera whooshes THROUGH the floor, and we suddently look UP at her, as if she was lying on glass.

Panic Room also has a lot of these juicy shots, but I think they mostly rely on CG (railing, keywhole, coffee machine, etc.), rather than super-tricky plate compositing.

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