Will it go round in Circles...

June 9, 2014 7:32 PM

Den of Geek provides a brief survey of rotating sets in film as far back as Royal Wedding in 1951 all the way up to Inception in 2010. In the world of music video, Metallica did their own interesting... ahem, spin on it for "The Memory Remains". The television show "Glee" paid tribute to Royal Wedding with their own rotating room song and dance number. Finally, the Den of Geek article states that such effects require, "intense planning, expensive materials and an army of builders". Nonsense.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI (10 comments total)

Also worthy of mention is the TV pilot for Joel Hodgson's TV Wheel, part 1, 2, 3, 4 5, 6. Interesting concept, but it didn't really come together and was not picked up.

(note: the rotation is only on the horizontal axis, however)
posted by chambers at 8:10 PM on June 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

My favourite.
posted by robcorr at 8:11 PM on June 9, 2014 [4 favorites]

Are we sure Royal Wedding had a rotating set? Because I'm willing to believe that gravity applies to Fred Astaire only selectively.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 8:32 PM on June 9, 2014 [4 favorites]

Its done with the camera and not the set, but 1960's Frames of Reference deserves an honorable mention.
posted by Jahaza at 8:36 PM on June 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't see what's so fancy about rotating sets.
posted by aureliobuendia at 9:18 PM on June 9, 2014

Sure, the sets have rotation, but do they have translation?
posted by neckro23 at 2:43 AM on June 10, 2014

Nonsense.

Of course, you can just flip an ordinary room 90 or 180 degrees and confuse the heck out of friends and family.

(unfortunately, the images have disappeared from the original post so the above was all I could find...)
posted by effbot at 3:19 AM on June 10, 2014

Mod note: duplicated url fixed
posted by taz (staff) at 4:22 AM on June 10, 2014

I'll bet they were inspired by "haunted swings" which were a popular early amusement park ride. They still have one at Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster.
posted by interplanetjanet at 8:03 AM on June 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

Did someone say rotating room song and dance number? Here's the 80's music video version.
posted by yohko at 10:20 AM on June 10, 2014