Ames Room: Optical Illusion in Cinema

663 Words2 Pages

An Ames room is a misshapen room that forms an optical illusion. Ames room was invented by a brilliant ophthalmologist named, Adelbert Ames, Jr in the year 1934. In 1946, the first Ames room was created which also happened to grasp the concept of a German scientist named, Hermann Von Helmholtz, in the late nineteenth century. The Ames room is also known as the “distorted room”, because the optical illusion violates the laws of physics. The Ames room uses a selective perceptual distortion that is named Honi Phenomenon, which happens to cause some people to perceive a less size distortion in the Ames room project. The Ames room has actually been used in real life projects such as movies, movies like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and in The Lord of The Rings trilogy use Ames rooms sets to replace the use of digital special effects to create the illusion of the hobbits as small compared to humans and many other characters. …show more content…

In reality there should be no shock to our perspective of the empty room as normal because the image we see through the peephole is identical to the image that we would view from a normal rectangular room. But when people actually stand in the room a conflict seems to appear. The reason why is because the person in the further corner has the smaller image because of the bigger distance from the observer unlike to a person on the nearer corner. Another thing that really is shocking and stands out is that the observers see the people distorted in their size and the room keeps the rectangular shape. The reason why the vision seems a little bit tricky is because we are use to seeing rectangular rooms not trapezoid rooms. This is why the creator himself of Ames room and other famous researchers have used this wonderful creation to demonstrate the importance of the experience of

Open Document