Mirrored

This is a short film that I created called "Mirrored". It is about a boy who travels through the Mirror world, encountering his mirrored-self, who is trying to replace him from the real world. 

This work is a huge exploration for me towards cloning effect. Everyone know the easiest way to clone is just split-comp on a still camera, so I say why not bringing this to the next level, what if I make both clones interact each other, and try to make their interaction as real as possible.  After many research of cloning effects, I manage to do it, although there are few problems in the process, but I quite satisfied with the overall result.

Also, it is heavily inspired by Stranger Things. The whole mirror world is inspired from Stranger Things' Upside Down World, where it is dark and roots everywhere. I even manage to re-create the Mind Flayer (Big Monster) by going through some YouTube tutorials. 

Here's a Breakdown of few shots from the short film that I think is challenging to do.

One of my proudest and most challenging scene would be this one. Making both of the same person bump into each other. Not only the interaction has to be real, the timing and all has to be perfect.  My idea to execute this scene, is to have another person bump into the actor to create that action and movement, and then in comp, I will mask out that other person, and comp both of the actors together. I have really no idea whether or not this is gonna work, but at the end it turns out really good and I'm proud of it.

Another time consuming shot would be this Mind Flayer scene. Although I did followed a YouTube tutorial for this, but it's still difficult for me to apply on my own footage. Spent quite a lot of time fixing some stuff instead of getting the things done, I have to alter a few method in order to achieve this result. 

During shooting, we encountered quite a few problems. First, we shot everything in a dark and dim lighting surrounding, therefore lessening the amount of details in our footage. This makes it hard to 3D track, many of the scenes I have to recreate the surrounding into the "Mirror World" where a lot of 3D tracking are needed, if it doesn't track well, I have to think of something else. 

Another problem would be the greenscreen keying. Without proper lighting equipment, I couldn't light the greenscreen properly, therefore making it hard to key. There are a few shots ended up roto-ing the actor even though the greenscreen is behind.  

Well all these pain in post-production, at least I learned something and gained some experiences in shooting.

And I also purposely designed two posters for this short film just for fun xD

Well I hope you guys enjoy the short film. Thanks for Watching !