10 Movie Scenes That Totally Tricked Your Brain
1. Camera Filter Tricks Allow An "Impossible" Transformation - Sh! The Octopus
An oldie but a goodie now, with the 1937 mystery-comedy Sh! The Octopus.
The film features a fascinating effect which surely must've blown audience's minds 80-something years ago, when Elspeth Dudgeon's character Nanny undergoes a sudden, grotesque transformation into a witch in the middle of a scene.
While today such an effect could be achieved via VFX with relative ease, such tools obviously weren't available back in 1937, and so director William McGann had to get incredibly creative to pull off such a mind-melting, how-the-hell-did-they-do-that effect.
Despite the seeming impossibility of executing such a radical transformation in-camera so long ago, it was actually completed entirely practically.
McGann used an ingenious technique developed by cinematographer Karl Struss for 1925's Ben-Hur, involving the manipulation of colour filters to trick the viewer's mind.
For Dudgeon's transformation, extensive makeup was applied to her face using a single shade of colour, after which a filter was applied to the camera lens that matched the colour of the makeup, in turn rendering it invisible to the camera.
Then all it took was for the camera operator to close the filter as Dudgeon removed her wig and the makeup would suddenly become visible to the audience.
One can only imagine how viewers of the time, without easy access to behind-the-scenes information, must've felt when they watched this near-literal movie magic play out on screen.