Last week was Easter, and I had Easter Parade on the brain. Released in 1948, the film stars Fred Astaire and Judy Garland. It's a fun musical, with two undeniable attractions--Fred Astaire's fancy footwork and Garland's voice.
If you get impatient, skip to 2:20 for Fred Astaire's big number. It's a lot of fun!
A mental jump, hop, and skip away from this film was Fred Astaire's Royal Wedding. One of its most famous scenes involves Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling in one of the set rooms. It was, I think, pretty advanced for its time (and even now, I'm still impressed by the visual fun).
The basic premise for how it works is that Fred Astaire is dancing in a rotating room, and the camera must rotate at the same angular velocity as the room. In the final filmed product, we can't see the room moving because the room's velocity relative to the camera is zero. And voila, Fred Astaire is dancing on the ceiling!
Here's a clip showing both the scene as it appears in the film, and the scene if you were an onlooker watching them film the scene.
In Christopher Nolan's Inception, a similar premise was used to film the a-MAY-zing fight scene featuring Joseph Gordon Levitt.
I've a huge behind-the-scenes fan. A big fan of minutiae and all things 'trivial,' I value the Special Features on DVDs and Blu-Rays almost as much as the film itself. (You will never catch me buying a DVD with no special features. Never.) The subdued music playing behind a director's commentary, the smooth transition between production stills--I love it all. Much to my glee, there is a clip online with commentary about Joseph Gordon Levitt's hallway acrobatics. You can check it out below. I never thought about it before, but a rotating set that has props requiring electricity poses a special problem for set designers. To find out how they solved that issue, and to hear Joseph Gordon Levitt talk about the intense training needed for the scene, watch the clip! :)
