The first half of the film is a person looking into a fish eye lens. The second half is a person looking into a convex mirror. In both halves the effect is to distort and exaggerate perspective in the same way. In both halves the person plays innocently with the distortion of their own image. What is the difference?

...a short pause here for you to see the animation and try to work out the difference yourself, and work out where one half ends and the next begins...

If the first half, a fisheye lens is connected to a video camera, we see the background is stationary, and the character's eyes point slightly to the right.

He/she is looking not into the lens, but a screen that shows what the fisheye lens sees, positioned slightly to the left of the camera. We, watching the animation, see what the camera sees. The background stays still, as does the camera, while the person, looking annoyingly not quite at us, moves around the screen.

In the second half, a hemispherical mirror, the background banks from side to side and zooms in and out, and the character's eyes point directly forward.

He/she is looking at his reflection in a hemispherical mirror, and, whenever he/she sees his/her eyes, they are looking directly back at him/her. As the person leans forward, the mirror gets closer. As the person tilts his/her head, the room tips sideways, but the person's head is still level. We, watching the animation, are looking through the person's eyes, seeing their reflection in the mirror.



But ... when you tilt your head from side to side does the image bank? Or does your brain, which knows which end up your head is, compensate and tilt the image accordingly? Yet the tilting of the image is an important clue that we are now looking in a mirror.

Look again at the animation. Can you tell which is which now?