Hey, you all remember the great number in the movie Royal Wedding where Fred Astaire literally danced on the ceiling. Let's refresh our memories and watch it again, shall we?
Now then. A fellow named Galen Fott, who I believe I first met when he was working as a puppeteer for Jim Henson, took it upon himself to "unskew" this number. Obviously, what Mr. Astaire was doing when they filmed it was dancing in a room that rotated on some sort of axle. The camera was locked-down to the room so it rotated in sync with it, making the room seem stationary. Well, Galen decided to create a video of…well, you'll understand what he did when you watch it. Here's a page on how he did it and some observations he had…
One thing that briefly confused me: On the unskewed video, you'll see a lot of traveling matte dissolves and wipes. Those were not there in the original. They're things that Galen had to do to re-create the entire room for each shot since the camera shooting Astaire was not showing the entire room. Ignore them and just focus on the skillful dancing by Fred and the technical wizardry of the folks at M.G.M. who made this all work in a day before C.G.I.
Also, credit should go to Alan Jay Lerner, who wrote the movie and who claimed the idea for the dance came to him in an actual dream. He said he saw Fred dancing on the walls and ceiling while asleep, woke up remembering it and went to the producers and said, "Can you do that?" They could and did — and here's how they did it. Take this full screen on your monitor…