One of my favorite position cheats in a forest is to have the actor run in a large circle around the camera as the camera follows them. It gives the appearance of them running straight and you can do it for as long as you need to with a very small piece of forest
Last bodyshop I worked at we repaired and painted one of the Supernatural Impalas. Guy who dropped it off told us how they used hairspray to mute the reflections in the clear coat.
yay that reflection bit i had trouble with back when my cam was white.. I used IR FLOCK to cover.. And guess what No reflection what so ever.. i love my IR FLOCK.. Look it up is great for No shadows and stuff.. Great show though..
Now THIS is movie magic. Speaking of Tom Cruise and JJ Abrams, there was one shot in a mission impossible film where another actor had to push a gun into Tom's nose. The actor kept pushing either too hard and hurting Tom or not hard enough to look believable. The fix was to dress up Tom's hand to look like the other actor and have him push the gun himself, since he could push as hard as he wanted on his own nose without it hurting. NO BUDGET MAGIC!
More of an editing cheat but when im cutting together an interview and I need to add in a filler word to join two sound bites like an "and" or "but", anything like that. I will do almost like a double j cut where I will pull the video from both sound bites to cover the added word, switching from a to b camera. Because the word is being said on the cut, and its such a small word and is only a second or so long, it will usually look like the person said it. sometimes I dont want to have to cover with B-roll and I use this trick to stay on the person if I need to. Sometimes I will work with a couple filler words. You have to play around to see where the camera switch should go to sell it but im surprised how often it works.
Another reflection fix is that we carry a small bag of wine corks for any artwork or framed glass pics hung on walls. We insert the cork under the lower edge of the frame and tilt it out and no more reflection.
I remember in animation school sometimes we might have a render with like 3 frames that had a glitch. My teacher said "it's not cheating to fix them in Photoshop". It's just one more tool in your belt. You do whatever it takes to get the shot.
In the Batman scene, the light is not coming at the actors from the "same direction". Batman's left side is "in the dark", so the other actor's RIGHT side should be "in the dark". Otherwise, I like it!
Whip cuts. Utterly my favorite form of masking a cut or making a "clone" appear as if they're in the same room etc. Without using motion tracking and all shot in camera.
Even just cutting a few frames to give a whip pan more pace, or to stitch a perfect start and end of pan together. It's amazing what you can get away with!
Man brother I'v been watching you guys since the beginning (the Florida days) and its amazing to see how far this show has come and how much knowledge you have shared with this community. It's so encouraging. I hope you appreciate what a blessing it is to have so many talented collaborators with you Ryan and to work with your brother for this long on this show and other projects. Keep it up. Hope to see your art on the big screen soon.
I am using French Turnaround way before I knew the name for it, & I used to call it "Breaking 180 for maintaining it". Tenet, take my bow down in the🥇place.
best and simplest cheat is just slightly moving people, props, and set dec for different angles if something blocks the view of something or if need the background to look slightly better
Over the shoulder cheats. If you don’t have both actors to get your coverage. You can get anybody or even some sort of mannequin to stand in for your OTS
Ryan you've been a blessing for so many years. You keep my passion for film alive, and succeed long past the failures film school gave me years ago. I still remember the first time the turbulent displacement gag was made. I've managed to pave a way for myself as an influencer on TikTok with the luck of achieving 2m+ followers, and i'm soon to record a music video for my first debut single. It's going to be my first proper directorial film project since graduating 5 years ago. Thank you for making film feel achievable, I was 16 when I first found you and the gang. Now I'm 26 (not to give you an existencial nightmare even though it gives me one to think about it...) You really ignited the fire in the hearts of many aspiring filmmakers. Thank you.
i always thought those switches done in comedy were somehow done more obviously as if for comedic purpose. Were they actually trying to hide that it was a stunt person, when doing that in a comedy?
Front surface mirrors are also great for crash scenes. Have the camera just off to the side and have the vehicle crash into the mirror. Front surface are much more expensive but less distortion and doesn't give a double image. Also great for overhead table/bed shots with practical ceilings.
