Smoke and Mirrors
On September 5, 2012
- TV History
Smoke and Mirrors
A while back, there were some questions about an Ernie Kovacs photo posted here that had him pouring water (that was missing the glass), on a titled gimble set. The set was at quite an angle but the viewfinder shot was level…how? Mirrors. This old style system is still around and in use mostly for cooking segments, but the mirror arrangement can also be flipped to make the shot look like the camera is floor level, like for dance numbers. Now you know!
On cooking shows, we used a mirror over the cooking surface all the time to get an overhead shot. The large mirror was quite heavy, and it did fall once due to a faulty tether.
I’ve seen setups like this in the past for cooking segments. These days, though, we use a small camera that was easy to mount on the ceiling.