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Working Title: Living Shadow: From YKTTW
- I remember reading a sci-fi short story in which a boy discovers an alien ship full of two-dimensional creatures that begin to parasitize the people of his town by hiding in their shadows. At the end of the story, the protagonist is running for his life, and is well on his way to the next town - unaware that his shadow is almost, but not quite, keeping in step with him. Does anyone have any idea which story I'm talking about?
The final bullet under 'Film' currently says:
- During the "Bojangles of Harlem" number in Swing Time, Fred Astaire dances before a large backdrop on which he seems to cast three shadows. The shadows begin moving independently of him, and eventually walk away. (The awesome thing, on a meta level, is realizing that until this point he had been dancing in perfect sync with the prerecorded back-projection, which he wasn't even looking at.)
Without downplaying Fred Astaire's skills, it should be noted that the 'shadows' were not back-projected - they were added in post-production by overlaying a live-action shot of Astaire in front of a black curtain with an inked-over, multiplied, and selectively enlarged shot of him in front of a white curtain. This is basically the black-and-white equivalent of chroma-key ('greenscreen' or 'bluescreen'), and as with poorly done chroma-key there are frames in which the background image bleeds through the foreground image. This is especially apparent any time a shadow passes behind an area where the foreground is black, such as Astaire's hair or his hat band.
You can view the scene in question on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6cLbk9k8BI
Note that in the moments leading up to 7:04, Astaire is almost transparent any time there isn't a shadow behind him. After that time there is a cut to a scene that was shot without the chroma-key effect, and he looks normal.
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