10 Movies That Put INSANE Effort Into Tiny Details
1. Eliminating Reflections With Mattes - Knives Out
Eliminating reflections on film sets to ensure crew and equipment aren't visible can be extremely tedious, with filmmakers often either resorting to removing as many reflective surfaces as possible from the shot, digitally painting out unsightly reflections, or just... living with it.
But for Knives Out, cinematographer Steve Yedlin came up with an ingenious in-camera method for getting rid of pesky reflections - disguising lighting equipment as windows.
For scenes where lighting diffusers would be visible in the glasses of characters played by the likes of Daniel Craig and Jamie Lee Curtis, Yedlin had mattes created which had the pattern of the nearby window on them.
When these mattes were placed in front of the diffusers, they would be reflected in the glasses instead, blocking out the diffusion and totally convincing the audience that we're simply seeing the window from the scene reflected in the glasses.
It's a fairly low-fi solution compared to other entries on this list, but the commitment to fixing reflections practically rather than relying on cleanup in post is laudable.