Film Panoramas: Ben Stiller’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The long promised panoramic stitches from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty are finally complete! This is my second foray into the Film Panorama world to share with you, the first was completed about 5 months ago. If this is your first time seeing this project, I dig into a little more detail on my first post on Wes Anderson’s Hotel Chevalier

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is one of my favorite contemporary films, which is why its one of the first I stitched. There are some really fun actions shots in here I know you’ll love as much as I do. It definitely a poster child for the Film Panoramas project because it shows off the visual style so well.

75 Total Panoramic Stitches for Walter Mitty

I got good feedback for the last series of stitches for the short and a couple suggestions for films you’d like to see stitched next. Diving into a feature turned out to be quite the beast, however. The time commitment was much more significant for this feature than for the first series from the short. As a comparison, because the short is only about 12 minutes long, I only stitched 7 images in the end.

Because The Secret Life of Walter Mitty comes in it at around 105 minutes, I actually had 75 stitches to work with this time around. This meant it took a rather long time to complete. (I would have had it done sooner were it not for a few other major things moving forward that I can’t wait to share with you!)

Film Panoramas Now on Patreon

I’ll continue to enjoy the entire process and I’ll be slowly working through the next piece. However, I started a Patreon account for these Film Panoramas. Supporting this Patreon account is for you if you want to help me expedite the process for new stitches.

There is a really basic landing site here and you can find my Patreon profile here. I’ve got a few fun rewards set up for patrons I think you’d enjoy. I’d also appreciate hearing if you would like a different sort of reward I don’t currently have listed.

Full Disclosure on Experimental Stitches

One last thing… There are a number of these stitches which are probably better termed experimental. Prime examples of some of the strangeness that can occur is if the shot isn’t a very clean pan. Pan shots with any kind of dolly involvement usually warp perspective significantly.

In the shot where Walter is in the airplane, you’ll notice the rows of seats don’t line up. In this particular case its because the shot zooms in as it dollys. This means there’s not enough physical information in the frames to represent each row of seats. I included any of these options in the series that still seemed to work, especially the series of shots quoting the life motto: “To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.” Because you have to see the entire motto in succession!

Most of my favorite images are here, but you’ll have to go to the Film Panoramas website to see all 75 of the panoramas. (don’t forget, because these images are long panoramas, this post is best viewed on a desktop. If you’re checking it out on mobile, turn your screen horizontally!)