The opening scene with Shingen, his brother, and the thief/double. The same actor plays Singen and the thief right? How was the effect achieved so well? The thief gets up and moves so close to Shingen that I would have guessed they used a traveling matte, but I don't think they had traveling mattes in 1980. How'd they do it?
shareWhy would they need a travelling matte? If you watch closely you can see a traditional vertical static matte line between them. also you will notice the eye-lines are out, but that is irrelevant here.
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what makes you think it was made for westerners
shareIt is indeed a minor special effect shot. Kurosawa used a horizontal matte with two different plates printed and then superimposed. Standard trick and barely noticable.
shareI noticed that the opening shot looked like a matte, but to me Shingen and the thief looked so different (alike enough, yet certainly distinct) during the film that I did not realize they were played by the same man until I read about it online.
shareI love the opening.
The first line in the screenplay says:
- There are three identical men. -
What a way to open a movie!
A Travelling matte is used to block out and keep a portion of film unexposed so that another photographic element can be printed onto that piece of film, and give the appearance of it being part of the original scene.
This shot was done with split screen, or regular matte with the camera in lockdown. No one was matted in as such, but rather the film was probably shot twice with the actor performing one role and then another.