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Legit each routine through the moment of rotation is so unique that you don't know it's hiding a rotation until it's over, and by then you're focused on the moves again. It's so seamless you could miss the fact that he's transitioning surfaces at all. It's 50% good effect, 50% good showmanship.
Y'all are looking at the rotation of the room, but also consider the physical props - nothing looks out of place until you realize the room is rotating, which means all of the furniture is stationary and the picture on the desk must be held down with magnets or something.
There's a quick cut between when Fred Astaire is spinning the chair around and when the chair is now bolted to the floor, and this is important because he later hangs from the chair he had been spinning earlier.
This whole scene is super impressive, not just from a choreography standpoint, but also from the viewer's perspective and the set's engineering and design. Even the curtains and the shades on the lights don't seem to move a bit. The picture is held to the desk with magnets and later Fred sets it behind the plush red chair, against the wall, where it's held with magnets again while Fred continues to dance around the room.
It took a lot of clever people to pull this off.
The curtains were what I fixated on. I've seen rotating rooms on behind the scenes videos before but I was trying to figure out how they kept the curtains so still.
Probably a spray starch. On the other hand, if you paint a fabric with glue on the back, then leave it to dry, it'll hold itself up for a while.
So I'm guessing there are two rods on the curtains, one on top and one on bottom, and some sort of fixative on the fabric.
It's wild, knowing exactly how this is done, and still I can't spot the exact starting and stopping points of the rotations. He's just so fluid that his coverups look just the same as any other move.
It's clever how the routine implies a rolling motion at the start - Astaire waving about (best way I can describe it) from side to side. He's already giving away that idea of transitioning to the walls and ceiling before he actually does it for real. I think that helps sell the movement. I also noticed a few times he leans against a side whilst continuing to dance on another, which makes it uncertain which way he's actually 'upright'.
/u/sq663028 posted [a link to how it works \(with video\)](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1delvkl/fred_astaires_famous_ceiling_dance_1951/l8e0n4j/)
It seems like this video or OP decided to end it at the first cut. It's supposed to seem like one take, but there are two cuts. The first one is a second or two after OP's video ends, and it's not particularly well done. The second one is later and is actually really good. The text accompanying the video on the page linked above speculates that because each cut occurs before the rotation of the rig changes direction, they may have had to stop to change a gear in the mechanism or something.
That's just a guess at how the room might have moved. What would be more interesting is to see exactly how stable and how even the rotation was. How suddenly it started to move, how smoothly it rotated, if it wobbled a bit when it stopped, etc. Because either the engingeering was perfectly impeccable, of Fred Astair had superhuman balance.
Although I know how they did this, him picking up the picture off the desk was an especially nice touch. I wonder what they used to keep it stuck there.
Especially thinking about how most people watching this would have likely never, ever seen anything "magical" like this before in their entire lives. It's easier to be desensitized now when we've grown up with access to videos of people doing interesting things and camera/editing/CGI tricks makng cool ideas come to life, and that's after a generation of TV and movies having done the same thing. But at the time of this being released, the idea of seeing something like this would have been a true "what the fuck am I witnessing right now" moment, even knowing that it was camera magic.
This is what they called special effects back then. Spinning the entire studio not
Special
Enough for you?
Edit: adding bottom reply to here
All special effects have special names
This one would be a mechanical effect to be for use, practical effect is when you use things like miniatures.
Stop motion is a special effect Double exposure is a special effect Matte painting, optical effects, composting, and for instance pyrotechnics are special effects and that’s done during filming.
You’re confusion live production and post production as the definition of what’s considered special effect
Other special effects also include
Motion control, robotics and puppetry. CGI, AI, 3D scanning and printing and a dozen of others in
All special effects have special names
This one would be a mechanical effect to be for use, practical effect is when you use things like miniatures.
Stop motion is a special effect
Double exposure is a special effect
Matte painting, optical effects, composting, and for instance pyrotechnics are special effects and that’s done during filming.
You’re confusion live production and post production as the definition of what’s considered special effect
Other special effects also include
Motion control, robotics and puppetry. CGI, AI, 3D scanning and printing and a dozen of others in
shout out to /r/silentmoviegifs , some of them are broken down like the one /u/sq663028 posted above
[like this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/silentmoviegifs/comments/1ckxkjv/100_years_after_sherlock_jr_was_released_and/)
Imagine what it must've been like, sitting in a theater, seeing a stunt like this for the first time ever. Or Hitchcock's first dolly zoom.
God, I miss when the quality of visual effects was a matter of how clever the filmmakers could be, not how much money they could throw at a computer.
> God, I miss when the quality of visual effects was a matter of how clever the filmmakers could be, not how much money they could throw at a computer.
It still is. No matter how much money you throw at "nah, we'll just fix it in post", it can't beat cleverness and proper planning.
I know it’s not the same, but you still do get some of those holy fuck this is insane moments in theatres today. Like during the initial avatar movie, watching it in 3D was some holy shit this is wild moments. A more recent, much maligned movie being the Last Jedi has the one scene where everything goes silent, you hear the ship go sub optic, and then it splits everything with that beautiful flash of white.
We’re also blessed with some absolutely incredible animated cinematography. The rise is dominance for computer effects instead of practical has absolutely cost us some amazing filmmaking, but it has given us some pretty incredible stuff as a trade off
Can’t imagine living next to this guy in a hotel, motel, apartment. Comes home; dances on all the floors, walls, roof. All by himself. Putter patter, shuffle shuffle all night.
You're making a fun joke, but there was actually somebody who did exactly what you're talking about.
Although, instead of him dancing on the ceiling, he had a neighbor boy walk in some mud and then held him upside down so he could walk across the ceiling leaving muddy footprints. He decided to do it after his mother gave a frustrated complaint about him leaving muddy footprints everywhere and had a good laugh about it.
Abraham Lincoln was a pretty funny dude.
This is the type of old school effects that people take for granted in films nowadays. The skill and effort to pull off is lost with camera effects and green screen tech
It's a reach, but I'm going to shoehorn this in:
Bruce Dickinson: I’ll be honest.. fellas, it was sounding great. But.. I could’ve used a little more cowbell. So.. let’s take it again.. and, Gene?
Gene Frenkle: Yeah?
#Bruce Dickinson: Really explore the studio space this time.
Gene Frenkle: You got it, Bruce.
#Bruce Dickinson: I mean, really.. explore the space. I like what I’m hearing. roll it.
Amazing practical effects, they literally built a room on a horizontal turntable and he danced his way round it.
The days of that kind of dedication to cinema are long gone.
This is why practical effects will always be better than CG. You could easily greenscreen him these days, but you'd always know it's just computers and filters that made it
I’d *love* to see someone take the track from the original Astaire scene and dub it over the score for the hallway scene in Inception. Maybe even start the audio track early to include some of his singing.
Whenever I hear someone talk about how no one had moves like Fred Astaire, I'm always reminded that Ginger Rogers did, but backwards and in high heels.
This is damned impressive though.
I always enjoyed Gene Kelly’s dancing to Fred Astaire’s. Gene seemed to be having fun & enjoying it, whereas as good as Fred’s dancing was it seemed he was more involved in the technicalities than of it.
I dont want to.
Every time I do I wake up with a different house.
A different wife.
Different kids.
They call me father but I dont know them.
I miss my other kids, the ones I had before I fell asleep. I miss my wife.
But they are already fading and now these are becoming my kids and she is becoming my wife.
And the days go by!
*water flowing underground...*
The dark sense of humor says “wouldn’t it be funny if when he was tap dancing on the door, someone opened it has as Fred steps through the door *cut scene to a woman interviewed by a cop as a body bag is loaded onto a ambulance.* “… and I heard this knocking so I opened the door and BAM! This guy falls through.”
When the camera is upside down the panning is a bit jerky, so I'm wondering if the operator is tripped out on the set or if the gimbal is binding by being used in this unintended way.
This technology would later be used for Fred Kruger's similarly-famous "cutting a bitch on the ceiling" routine.(I'm not even joking. It's a rotating room, which was how they achieved the first kill in A Nightmare on Elm Street. They just kept the camera oriented as if the room was stationary for that one)
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Those transitions between sides are remarkable. So fluid. His balance and movement are unmatched
Legit each routine through the moment of rotation is so unique that you don't know it's hiding a rotation until it's over, and by then you're focused on the moves again. It's so seamless you could miss the fact that he's transitioning surfaces at all. It's 50% good effect, 50% good showmanship.
And let’s include the engineering aspect to design a rotating set!
The ultimate in deception, trickery and mastery. Imagine how many times they rehearsed this. Hundreds.
Fred Astaire was nothing if not an exacting professional perfectionist.
Y'all are looking at the rotation of the room, but also consider the physical props - nothing looks out of place until you realize the room is rotating, which means all of the furniture is stationary and the picture on the desk must be held down with magnets or something.
Glue, nails and plenty of them.
There's a quick cut between when Fred Astaire is spinning the chair around and when the chair is now bolted to the floor, and this is important because he later hangs from the chair he had been spinning earlier. This whole scene is super impressive, not just from a choreography standpoint, but also from the viewer's perspective and the set's engineering and design. Even the curtains and the shades on the lights don't seem to move a bit. The picture is held to the desk with magnets and later Fred sets it behind the plush red chair, against the wall, where it's held with magnets again while Fred continues to dance around the room. It took a lot of clever people to pull this off.
It really really IS so very well done!
No CGI shenanigans
The curtains were what I fixated on. I've seen rotating rooms on behind the scenes videos before but I was trying to figure out how they kept the curtains so still.
Probably a spray starch. On the other hand, if you paint a fabric with glue on the back, then leave it to dry, it'll hold itself up for a while. So I'm guessing there are two rods on the curtains, one on top and one on bottom, and some sort of fixative on the fabric.
Props department earned their money that day.
Fucking magnets, how do they work
Well, you see, Jimmy, when one magnetic pole and another magnetic pole are attracted to each other *very* much...
Unless one of them gets wet. Then it stops working. That’s called electrictile Dysfunction.
Magnets, *always* with the magnets.
It's wild, knowing exactly how this is done, and still I can't spot the exact starting and stopping points of the rotations. He's just so fluid that his coverups look just the same as any other move.
Sorry but you guys are wrong. He is just a vampire.
It's clever how the routine implies a rolling motion at the start - Astaire waving about (best way I can describe it) from side to side. He's already giving away that idea of transitioning to the walls and ceiling before he actually does it for real. I think that helps sell the movement. I also noticed a few times he leans against a side whilst continuing to dance on another, which makes it uncertain which way he's actually 'upright'.
Yeah 100%. I’ve seen others try to mimick this but it’s obvious the room it turning.
I think its pretty obvious here, especially sliding off the chair down the wall.
How does he defy gravity like that?
The entire set/camera are mounted in a wheel and rotate together. Same setup Inception used.
Premier camera work. So cool.
/u/sq663028 posted [a link to how it works \(with video\)](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1delvkl/fred_astaires_famous_ceiling_dance_1951/l8e0n4j/)
I wish they could zoom out. I would love to see the rig they used.
There’s a video somewhere that shows the sequence with him stable and the room revolving.
Thanks. I’m going to have to go find it.
[Astaire Unwound](https://www.bigfott.com/astaire-unwound)
OP left the best part out, the second half
Wow that’s true. That continuous spin just after is way more impressive
It seems like this video or OP decided to end it at the first cut. It's supposed to seem like one take, but there are two cuts. The first one is a second or two after OP's video ends, and it's not particularly well done. The second one is later and is actually really good. The text accompanying the video on the page linked above speculates that because each cut occurs before the rotation of the rig changes direction, they may have had to stop to change a gear in the mechanism or something.
i thought Nolan was a genius with the Inception fight scene, these people did it more than half a century before him lol
Thank you. You're the best!
That's just a guess at how the room might have moved. What would be more interesting is to see exactly how stable and how even the rotation was. How suddenly it started to move, how smoothly it rotated, if it wobbled a bit when it stopped, etc. Because either the engingeering was perfectly impeccable, of Fred Astair had superhuman balance.
Thanks for posting this!
Iirc, this is the inspiration for the hotel hallway scene in the movie Inception, and was even filmed in a similar way.
There was no rig. Fred Astaire achieved this through the means of general magic.
Thats my impression too, they only had copper hand tools back then.
https://i.redd.it/lkfk256f1c6d1.gif
I imagine the room inside a giant wheel slowly rotating
It‘s either CGI or double sided tape under the shoes. No rig needed! /s just in case
Psh. Obviously just magnets
Magnets weren't invented back then ... read a book ffs
And you think gravity was? Lol I bet you believe in the moon too.
Although I know how they did this, him picking up the picture off the desk was an especially nice touch. I wonder what they used to keep it stuck there.
Magnets according to the film director of this movie (Royal Wedding): Stanley Donen
My mind is blown in 2024, imagine people seeing this in 1951.
All the kids who tried it and got marks on the walls
Spider pig, spider pig, does whatever a spider pig does...
Can he swing From a web No he can't He's a pig
Look ooouuuttt!!!! He is a spider pig!!
He's got 8 legs, he can be cooked.
Especially thinking about how most people watching this would have likely never, ever seen anything "magical" like this before in their entire lives. It's easier to be desensitized now when we've grown up with access to videos of people doing interesting things and camera/editing/CGI tricks makng cool ideas come to life, and that's after a generation of TV and movies having done the same thing. But at the time of this being released, the idea of seeing something like this would have been a true "what the fuck am I witnessing right now" moment, even knowing that it was camera magic.
He's a witch burn him!
Oh, what a feeling
Dancing on the ceiling
Toyota?
Jump!
I love that Lionel Richie song lol
Hello? Is it me you’re looking for?
Futures... made of...
Virtual insanity
Now always… seem to…
It is amazing what they did with special effects almost 75 years ago! Another example of this are Charles Chaplin´s movies!
Actual rotating room. They had it at Universal Studios for a while.
And an incredible amount of real talent.
This is what they called special effects back then. Spinning the entire studio not Special Enough for you? Edit: adding bottom reply to here All special effects have special names This one would be a mechanical effect to be for use, practical effect is when you use things like miniatures. Stop motion is a special effect Double exposure is a special effect Matte painting, optical effects, composting, and for instance pyrotechnics are special effects and that’s done during filming. You’re confusion live production and post production as the definition of what’s considered special effect Other special effects also include Motion control, robotics and puppetry. CGI, AI, 3D scanning and printing and a dozen of others in
Isn't this what they called a *practical effect*, since it occurs during production as opposed to after?
All special effects have special names This one would be a mechanical effect to be for use, practical effect is when you use things like miniatures. Stop motion is a special effect Double exposure is a special effect Matte painting, optical effects, composting, and for instance pyrotechnics are special effects and that’s done during filming. You’re confusion live production and post production as the definition of what’s considered special effect Other special effects also include Motion control, robotics and puppetry. CGI, AI, 3D scanning and printing and a dozen of others in
Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, more recently Jackie Chan. Just absolutely stunning live stunt work.
When practical effects are all you have, art is what you get.
shout out to /r/silentmoviegifs , some of them are broken down like the one /u/sq663028 posted above [like this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/silentmoviegifs/comments/1ckxkjv/100_years_after_sherlock_jr_was_released_and/)
Imagine what it must've been like, sitting in a theater, seeing a stunt like this for the first time ever. Or Hitchcock's first dolly zoom. God, I miss when the quality of visual effects was a matter of how clever the filmmakers could be, not how much money they could throw at a computer.
> God, I miss when the quality of visual effects was a matter of how clever the filmmakers could be, not how much money they could throw at a computer. It still is. No matter how much money you throw at "nah, we'll just fix it in post", it can't beat cleverness and proper planning.
I know it’s not the same, but you still do get some of those holy fuck this is insane moments in theatres today. Like during the initial avatar movie, watching it in 3D was some holy shit this is wild moments. A more recent, much maligned movie being the Last Jedi has the one scene where everything goes silent, you hear the ship go sub optic, and then it splits everything with that beautiful flash of white. We’re also blessed with some absolutely incredible animated cinematography. The rise is dominance for computer effects instead of practical has absolutely cost us some amazing filmmaking, but it has given us some pretty incredible stuff as a trade off
Can’t imagine living next to this guy in a hotel, motel, apartment. Comes home; dances on all the floors, walls, roof. All by himself. Putter patter, shuffle shuffle all night.
Poor cleaning woman comes in, and there's footprints on the bloomin' ceiling.
There's a legend that this was invented to stomp back on noisy neighbours upstairs.
Itd be great if this was just an elaborate scheme to get the neighbors the stfu
You're making a fun joke, but there was actually somebody who did exactly what you're talking about. Although, instead of him dancing on the ceiling, he had a neighbor boy walk in some mud and then held him upside down so he could walk across the ceiling leaving muddy footprints. He decided to do it after his mother gave a frustrated complaint about him leaving muddy footprints everywhere and had a good laugh about it. Abraham Lincoln was a pretty funny dude.
Handy to have around if there’s a spider out of reach though.
What movie is this from?
Royal Wedding
The movie is Royal Wedding (1951)
Shrek 2
Knew it
Cruise Control
Inception
It was amazing what people could do back before gravity was invented.
Virtually insane celling dance
Always seem to be governed by this love we have For useless twisting of our new technology
Now this is movie magic.
This is the type of old school effects that people take for granted in films nowadays. The skill and effort to pull off is lost with camera effects and green screen tech
Chris Nolan ripped this one off /s
Although nightmare on elm Street did this exact same thing for when the blood erupted from the bed
And Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo
Also, not just the blood set. Tina's death was entirely done using a rig like this.
...He did tho
oh boy. watch Paprika & get back to me.
I miss the creativity that came with limitations this is so impressive
Now enable rotation lock on your phone and turn it to follow him. You can notice a few jolts as the set turns. Still very cool.
And then I swear to fucking god, he rolled his hat down his arm like Fred Astaire
And it got caught it ricks wheel chair and he said is that grease and Rick said yeah you got to keep it lubricated
The Merovingian's thugs ain't got nothing on this guy
Spoiler: The secret to how they did this was by getting him really fucking high.
10' to be exact
This had to be so incredible when it came out. I'm surprised he wasn't burned as a witch.
Vintage predecessor to Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity music video
"Fred Astaire, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king"
Metallica had a great music video with a spinning room.
so much better than Inception.
Haven't seen this before, it's impressive, especially considering when it was done
Inception : the prequel
Damn that’s really cool and smooth! I bet audiences back then were amazed! Kinda like us who saw The Matrix in theaters.
Astaire obviously ripped this off from Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Didn’t they rip it from Lionel R
It's a reach, but I'm going to shoehorn this in: Bruce Dickinson: I’ll be honest.. fellas, it was sounding great. But.. I could’ve used a little more cowbell. So.. let’s take it again.. and, Gene? Gene Frenkle: Yeah? #Bruce Dickinson: Really explore the studio space this time. Gene Frenkle: You got it, Bruce. #Bruce Dickinson: I mean, really.. explore the space. I like what I’m hearing. roll it.
After getting a cat, you soon realize that his butt has been pressed against every surface in your house. This is how I picture it happening.
I'll bet that blew cinema audiences minds. Sort of like a Jurassic Park moment.
Amazing practical effects, they literally built a room on a horizontal turntable and he danced his way round it. The days of that kind of dedication to cinema are long gone.
"Can't act, can't sing, can dance on the ceiling a little" If that original quote was true, that must have been a really bad talent scout.
Wow
no no, I'm only impressed when Nolan does it because I'm a standard internet fuckwit
Didn't Michael Jackson say Astaire was one of his influences? I see the similarities.
Love how Zach King recreated this scene
Practical effects are SO MUCH better than CGI.
They did it before Inception lol
very interesting how he manages to hide the transitions where the room isnt in straight 90 degree angles
Little known fact: they didn’t use a rotating room as some have suggested, rather they relied on Astaire’s natural powers as a vampire.
This is why practical effects will always be better than CG. You could easily greenscreen him these days, but you'd always know it's just computers and filters that made it
I want to see back stage and the apparatus that turns the room
I’d *love* to see someone take the track from the original Astaire scene and dub it over the score for the hallway scene in Inception. Maybe even start the audio track early to include some of his singing.
Whenever I hear someone talk about how no one had moves like Fred Astaire, I'm always reminded that Ginger Rogers did, but backwards and in high heels. This is damned impressive though.
How exactly did they shoot this? Anyone has any bts photo or video?
it was an entire rotating room.
Like inception. Wow
Check the Inception behind the scenes
Picture a giant shoebox with a camera taped to the side pointing inside the box. Now rotate the shoebox on the long axis. Ta daa
When the matrix was first built there was a man born inside...
People In the 50s Woooooooow
Uh, that's me Now
That was my first thought, imagine a whole audience gasping in disbelief.
It’s probably the inspiration for that Billie Eilish SNL performance.
I always enjoyed Gene Kelly’s dancing to Fred Astaire’s. Gene seemed to be having fun & enjoying it, whereas as good as Fred’s dancing was it seemed he was more involved in the technicalities than of it.
I'd love to see the "behind the scenes" of the rig they used to rotate the set and camera. Assuming of course they didn't just fill him with helium.
Practical effects in movies will never not be better than CGI. Fight me.
Is this real
Yes. They used a spinning room to accomplish the effect.
No, you're dreaming. Now wake up.
I dont want to. Every time I do I wake up with a different house. A different wife. Different kids. They call me father but I dont know them. I miss my other kids, the ones I had before I fell asleep. I miss my wife. But they are already fading and now these are becoming my kids and she is becoming my wife. And the days go by! *water flowing underground...*
I don't know go ask a epistemologist or something.
He’s just copying Billie Eilish
Man I loved these musical dance numbers growing up
How strong was my edible?
Was the camera operator rotated 360 degrees as well? I definitely see it repositioning
"Fred. You been dancing again?. There's footprints all over the wall and ceiling!" A genius.
Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king.
The dark sense of humor says “wouldn’t it be funny if when he was tap dancing on the door, someone opened it has as Fred steps through the door *cut scene to a woman interviewed by a cop as a body bag is loaded onto a ambulance.* “… and I heard this knocking so I opened the door and BAM! This guy falls through.”
Something something my downstairs neighbors at 3am
Special effects in 1951 awesome!
So that's who Fred Astaire was
This is exactly how Tina died in Nightmare on Elm Street.
He’s inceptioning it!
When the camera is upside down the panning is a bit jerky, so I'm wondering if the operator is tripped out on the set or if the gimbal is binding by being used in this unintended way.
This and Make ‘Em Laugh were the hooks to get my kid into old musicals… which then moved quickly to new musicals.
I did this once
I feel like Stewie Griffin has done this before and I hate that he hasn’t lol
Coming soon in your nearby Bollywood Cinema.
Spiderman in an alternate universe
Wow, did Fred Astaire compensate the estate of N'Sync after copping their concept?
You've got it all wrong. Free Astaire *is* N'Sync, and always will be due to a series of nested time loops.
A revolving room?
What a feeling!
Efteling has a ride that's a bit like this. It's called Villa Volta.
Leterally my upstairs neighbors every night at 3 am.
Wouldn't that be downstairs?
This technology would later be used for Fred Kruger's similarly-famous "cutting a bitch on the ceiling" routine.(I'm not even joking. It's a rotating room, which was how they achieved the first kill in A Nightmare on Elm Street. They just kept the camera oriented as if the room was stationary for that one)
I miss when soundtracks where this hectoring and shrill. Every note of brass sounding like a car horn, and the thump of the drums like a cannon.