I may have gone on about this shot before, but I still don't see how Mary Pickford's director Marshall Neilan and cinematographer Walter Stradling did this, long before the invention of motion-control cameras. Pickford plays both Stella and Unity in a split-screen double exposure, but then Stella walks offscreen and Unity follows her as the camera pans to the right, thus enabling Unity to appear to cross the "line" where the split was at the beginning of the shot. This required an exact matching of the camera movement during the two exposures of the same piece of film. Again, I have no idea how they did this so perfectly with the equipment available in 1918.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw6H4ZSCLpw
"Impossible" shot from Stella Maris (1918)
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dachshundonstilts
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"Impossible" shot from Stella Maris (1918)
"I feel so low, old chap, that I could get on stilts and walk under a dachshund." - Monty, It (1927)
Re: "Impossible" shot from Stella Maris (1918)
That's pretty cool! I wish that clip were longer. Split screen and projected images have always been fascinating to me.
You trying to tell me you didn't hear that shriek? That was something trying to get out of its premature grave, and I don't want to be here when it does. - Phantom of the Paradise (1974)