It’s been nearly three decades since that day on set at the legendary Culver Studios, and Roman Coppola is a bit older and far more seasoned, yet when he looks back at what he and his team achieved on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, he can’t help but marvel. “That was a good one, if I may brag a little, in that it was a backwards photography with a 50/50 mirror,” Roman says in 2020. When lit by green lights and reflected in the mirror, a sentient emerald mist suddenly appeared in the same room as Ryder. And in that blackness, smoke created by dry ice was oozing its way around the velvet. Instead, at about a 90-degree angle away from Ryder’s boudoir, stood a duplicate set of the same size and shape, but buried in black velvet Duvetyne. Yet co-star Gary Oldman wasn’t on hand that day. On the other end of the glass lay Winona Ryder in bed, ostensibly asleep but soon to be bedeviled by a monstrous vampire. Sitting before Roman Coppola’s second unit camera was a 50/50 mirror, the kind that was once commonplace in any illusionist’s magic shop, but which hadn’t seen the inside of a Hollywood studio in decades. It was one of the most challenging shots in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
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