How did they shoot the Las Vegas scene in "Now You See Me"?

Question

How did they shoot the Las Vegas MGM Grand scene in "Now You See Me" (2013)? At the beginning of the Las Vegas scene there is a very large auditorium with a rotunda stage and the camera's viewpoint swoops in a circle around the stage, high above the audience. How could they have gotten an aerial 360-degree shot like that?

Answer 1

It has been a while since I have seen the movie, but there are several ways that it could have been achieved.

The most likely answer is something like the camera being on an overhead cable, like a "Zip" line. they can pull the camera backwards and forwards on the cable, and turn the camera using a motion control "head" that the camera is attached to.

Other options include a Steadycam, or some kinf of camera crane, but those are less likely. There is also the posibility of hidden cuts, where they use something like a whip pan, or flash of a light to hide a cut where they switched between different cameras/rigs.

Hopefully that helps, if you have any follow up questions please let me know. Also, here is a behind the scenes video that shows everything I just described. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXv5262Fclw