Ramon & Pedro's 'Le Miroir' Presents a Full Life Lived Within the Confines of a Bathroom Mirror
When crafting stories to immortalise on screen filmmakers often reach for epic events, those formative experiences which are encompassed by phrases such as; “that was the Summer that changed my life” or “after we met I knew things would never be the same again”. Yet we all know from experience that real life tends to slip by steadily, with these milestones padded out by the much more mundane aspects of existence. Using good old camera trickery to deliver a narrative that could easily have fallen from the pages of David Eagleman’s book Sum, Le Miroir captures a lifetime lived in the POV reflection of the bathroom cabinet:
Conceived and directed by Swiss creative partnership Ramon & Pedro (Antoine Tinguely et Laurent Fauchère), Le Miroir pulled together three generations of the Destraz family to play the ‘aging before your eyes’ Louis, filling the teen role only after extensive casting hunts and makeup tests. The five day Red shoot was proceeded by a fortnight of set building which, along with the use of body doubles match moving the actors, allowed the production to pull off this 5-90 year old progression over its 6 minute running time. The behind the scenes video reveals some of the techniques they used to pull it off:
As well as performing on the festival circuit, grabbing ‘Most Creative Short’ in the Shanghai International Film Festival and an ‘Audience Award’ at the Manlleu Film Festival, Le Miroir must have also really impressed someone over at Warner Bros as the company placed it nationwide across 80 Swedish screens as the opening act to Todd Phillips’ Due Date.
Whilst we’re on the subject of limited perspective shorts, another excellent example of a film narrowing its field of view (this time to body parts rather than location) to deliver a compelling story is Tom Willems’ Left Right. The film focusses attention on the jealously which ferments in a left hand after dominance is snatched away from it and placed with the right at an early age:
In what ways have you imposed limits onto a project’s narrative to inspire creativity?
Links:
Le Miroir
Ramon & Pedro
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13 COMMENTS
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Mike on 07.20.12 @ 4:23AM
I have to recomend “Enter the Void”. This French full-length movie (directed by Gaspar Noé) has ‘poin of view’ master shot like in “le miroir”. “Enter the void” is very interesting from DOP point of view :) A lot of flying mastershots and so on…
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Joe M. on 07.25.12 @ 9:51AM
Enter the Void takes POV to a whole other level. From in-mirror effects like this film, hovering above building and through walls, to even inside the womb, Noe truly outdid himself with this film
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Filip on 07.20.12 @ 3:29PM
what a phenomenal short! great link guys! Also, reading that end section to the article about WB picking it up as an opener for Due Date, made me beg the question of why this isn’t done more often? Wouldn’t having an opener for a feature film, give audiences more incentive to be at/in the movie theatre longer, engaged, consuming? I admit I haven’t given much thought to the realistic financial implications of this strategy, but my intuition tells me that public would be interested in this and at little cost to studios/distributors because of the immense opportunity for exposure that is provided to the short film makers. On the musical side, almost all live shows have openers. I wonder when this feature became a staple in that industry? I assume that at one point it was not, so there must have been a conscious, calculated decision to incorporate this element. Anybody have any thoughts on this subject?
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Mar Belle on 07.21.12 @ 6:45PM
I’m pretty sure that shorts before feature is something that used to occur many years ago and slowly got phased out – presumably by the ever extended slate of ads we’re forced to sit through as a reward for turning up to the theatre on time. Pixar have been pretty good at placing shorts before their features since A Bug’s Life (thanks Wikipedia), but these are always their own works.
I agree it’d be a great nurturing move, for both audiences and filmmakers, if this happened more, but the cynic in me thinks there’s a spreadsheet somewhere that says those captive minutes are much too valuable to give away.
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Filip on 07.22.12 @ 3:23PM
It’s not cynical to think that ad money, and spreadsheet algorithms govern decisions in big business. You are right about PIxar, they are a modest exception to the general trend, even if it is merely their own shorts as an extension of the features. It is more enjoyable nonetheless. When I open a boutique movie theatre 20 years from now, I’ll show independent short films before the features. I hope others will join me in this fantasy and help make it a trend.
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Mar Belle on 07.22.12 @ 6:21PM
You’d be fighting the good fight and I’d happily become a faithful regular.
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That was very good. It got me after he was a father, because at that point the story became interesting. I did a film, with a lot of POV (inspired by Shane Hurlburts last 3 miniutes) which you can see at http://www.PaintingWithLights.net
:-) Leo
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Derrick on 07.26.12 @ 11:21PM
This scenario of aging infront of a barhroom mirror was in a robin Williams movie… It had something to do with editing people’s memories… And it was a montage he cut together.
1 pingbacks
- Dreamwalls Glass » Blog Archive » Beauty of the Banal in “Le Miroir” on 07.25.12 @ 6:02AM
that bathroom short was hella cool. sound design was spot on.