映す
うつす · utsusu · JLPT N3 · verb-godan
to project
📽️🪞 映 = 日 sun + 央 centre: light thrown to the middle, as in 映画 movie
The same 映 appears in 映画 (eiga, film), so think of it as the projector kanji. 映す is putting an image onto a surface: a film on a screen, a face in a mirror (鏡に映す), or a shadow on a wall. Compare 写す (utsusu), which means to copy or photograph.
映 — sun 日 + center 央 (phonetic)
映 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The sun radical 日 gives the meaning—light, shining, reflection—while 央 (yāng) supplies the sound, shifted to yìng. It originally described sunlight shining on something, and now broadly means 'reflect,' 'shine upon,' or 'project' (as in films).