A Man Films Himself Walking Backwards in Tokyo… And Then Reverses the Video
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Tokyo Reverse is a movie with a running time of 9 hours, and it was broadcasted in its entirety on a network in France. As strange as that sounds, the network is known to do things like this, and this clip from the film shows exactly how the entire thing was filmed: with a guy walking backwards.
It’s strange to look at on first glance, but you’ll notice how cleverly put it all really is as the clip goes on. Ludovic Zuili, the man in the video, films himself walking backwards in a way where it’d look like he was walking completely normally if the clip were to be reversed.
This is a technique that’s been used in films before many times, usually when the filmmakers needed an easy way to achieve an effect. There’s a film called Brother From Another Planet in which a man is filmed walking backwards, and then forwarded like this video; the reasoning was because the character in the movie was an alien humanoid, and showing reversed footage of him walking backwards gave the scene a slightly eerie vibe. I’d try finding a video, but there’s none with that scene as far as we’ve looked. The movie is, however, up in the public domain online so go check it out and see if you can spot the scene.
Try looking at this video the same way. Even with how perfectly the man has his backward walk down, his reversed walk still looks slightly off. All in all, this clip is an illusion, and an incredibly cool one at that. Things like the escalator sequence and the selfie he takes with those Tokyo girls are what make this clip both enjoyable and intriguing to watch.
[TOKYO REVERSE – EXTRAITS via This Is Colossal]
Maaz Khan
Maaz Khan started off teaching himself photography with a disposable Kodak camera he got for his 7th birthday. His main weapons of choice are now the 5D Mark II, and an LG G2 when mobility calls.
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19 responses to “A Man Films Himself Walking Backwards in Tokyo… And Then Reverses the Video”
I saw Benny Hill do this 30 years ago (or more).
I knew a kid with the same name as yours 40 years ago (or more).
Awesome.
Eric Drader
French here. To bring some general context, this is the first time, to my knowledge, that this kind of event (a very long TV program) is done on french TV. It is kind of a test, inspired from the “slow TV” stuff that was first broadcasted in Norway IIRC (20hours or something showing a boat on its way from point A to point B). In France, it’s been somewhat a failure in terms of number of viewers but apparently it’s been talked about a lot.
Apparently it’s considered a ‘small revolution’ over there as well. Hm.
Maybe they should shift their focus more towards generating online views. These kinds of events would probably be more suited for the web rather than television.
Christopher Ross David Ross pretty cool.
Awesome!
Very cool. :)
Loved it!
Check out a music video filmed the same way… https://youtube.com/watch?v=X6jprOZ29wY
This is more my genre of music so.. https://youtube.com/watch?v=co3qMdkucM0
Forgot to add for those that do not know. They learned to sing the lyrics backwards for the same effect on video.
yep, very cool! and even if it may not be the originator of a style, that doesn’t make it less cool.
Awesome!
The actor has to sing the lyrics the reverse way :), same concept presented differently. From an Indian movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfTB6KhPzHU
Its like that Coldplay Song where he learnt all of his lyrics backwards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB-RcX5DS5A
This is interesting for a few seconds. What perplexes me is why something as simple and ‘throw away’ as this gets so much attention.
There is also a version of this in filmedToronto, with a backwards fire at the intro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qutLlXUB9fs