Bullet time

All you want to know about Bullet time

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Bullet time (or bullet-time) is a computer enhanced simulation of variable speed (ie. slow motion, time lapse, other) photography used in films, broadcast advertisements and computer games. It is characterized both by its extreme permutation of time (slow enough to show normally imperceptible and un-filmable events, such as flying bullets) and space (by way of the ability of the camera angle--the audience's point-of-view--to move around the scene at a normal speed while events are slowed). The first movie to use a bullet-time was Blade in 1998 , where bullets were computer-generated and digitally implemented.

This is almost impossible with conventional slow-motion, as the physical camera would have to move impossibly fast; the concept implies that only a "virtual camera," often illustrated within the confines of a computer-generated environment such as a game or virtual reality, would be capable of "filming" bullet-time types of moments. Technical and historical variations of this effect have been referred to as time slicing, view morphing, slow mo, temps mort and virtual cinematography.

Contents

Technology

The Bullet Time effect was originally achieved photographically by a set of still cameras surrounding the subject. These arrays are usually triggered at once or sequentially. Singular frames taken from each of the still cameras are then arranged and displayed consecutively to produce an orbiting viewpoint of an action frozen in time or as hyper-slow-motion. This technique suggests the limitless perspectives and variable frame rates possible with a virtual camera. However, if the still array process is done with real cameras, it is often limited to assigned paths.

Using Computer vision techniques, for many years it has been possible to capture scenes and render images of novel viewpoints sufficient for bullet time type effects. More recently these have been formalized into what is becoming known as Free viewpoint television (FTV). At the time of The Matrix, FTV was not a fully mature technology. FTV is effectively the live action version of bullet time, without the slow motion.

Blade was the first movie to use the bullet-time sequence, where Blade shoots main protagonist Deacon Frost, all three bullets were shot and succesfully dodged by Deacon Frost. It was the first movie to feature a person to successfully dodge all the bullets. The effect was further implemented in Blade's sequels: Blade II - Blade jumps from a balcony and shoot into a running vampire, the bullet is clearly seeing flying, the vampire is successfully killed and shot further several times until he's totally burned. Blade: Trinity - When Blade, Abigail and Hannibal King discover that Drake took Dr. Vance's form and see that he's dead, Abby shoots him and the bullet is seeing flying as well, but is dodged by Drake, and breaks window behind him.

In The Matrix, the camera path was pre-designed using computer-generated visualizations as a guide. Cameras were arranged, behind a green or blue screen, on a track and aligned through a laser targeting system, forming a complex curve through space. The cameras were then triggered at extremely close intervals, so the action continued to unfold, in extreme slow-motion, while the viewpoint moved. Additionally, the individual frames were scanned for computer processing. Using sophisticated interpolation software, extra frames could be inserted to slow down the action further and improve the fluidity of the movement (especially the frame rate of the images); frames could also be dropped to speed up the action. This approach provides greater flexibility than a purely photographic one. The same effect can also be produced using pure CGI, motion capture and universal capture. It is thought that the opening sequence from the late 1960s Speed Racer cartoons partially inspired the Wachowski Brothers to incorporate the bullet time effect into the Matrix.

History

Muybridge horse photos

Antecedents to bullet time occurred before the invention of cinema itself. Eadweard Muybridge used still cameras placed along a racetrack to take pictures of a galloping horse. Each camera was actuated by a taut string stretched across the track; as the horse galloped past, the camera shutters snapped, taking one frame at a time. (The original intent was to settle a debate the governor of California had engaged in, as to whether all four of the animal's legs would leave the ground when galloping.) Muybridge later assembled the pictures into a rudimentary animation, by placing them on a glass disk which he spun in front of a light source. His zoopraxiscope may have been an inspiration for Thomas Edison to explore the idea of motion pictures. (Hendricks 1961)

Muybridge also took photos of actions from many angles at the same instant in time, to study how the human body went up stairs, for example. This is the effect used in The Matrix, and other movies, and is achieved roughly the same way as Muybridge set up his shots. In effect, however, Muybridge had achieved the aesthetic opposite to The Matrix's bullet-time sequences, since his studies lacked the dimensionality of the later developments. A debt may also be owed to MIT professor Doc Edgerton, who, in the 1940s, captured now-iconic photos of bullets using xenon strobe lights to "freeze" motion.

In popular film culture, Blade was the first film to illustrate super human reflexes dodging bullets in a scene in a park when the character of Blade fires at Stephen Dorf's character, Deacon Frost. Computer generated bullets are also used to illustrate the concept and slow motion camera work.

John Woo is also famous for incorporating slow motion shoot outs in his movies, such as A Better Tomorrow and Hard Boiled. These films would later influence media such as Max Payne and The Matrix series.

Long before the emergence of a technology permitting a live-action application, bullet-time as a concept was frequently developed in cel animation. One of the earliest examples is the shot at the end of the title sequence for the late-sixties Japanese anime series Speed Racer: as Speed leaps from the Mach Five, he freezes in mid-jump, and then the camera does an arc shot from front to sideways.

The first music video to use bullet-time was "Army of Me", a 1995 Björk video directed by Michel Gondry. [1]. It was also featured in Dario Argento's 1996 horror movie The Stendhal Syndrome (CGI, with a bullet), and the 1998 BBC documentary mini-series Intimate Universe: The Human Body with time-slice by Tim Macmillan. In 1994, Dayton Taylor invented a film-based system called TimeTrack that was used in many television commercials [2]. Bullet time became popularized when John Gaeta and team expanded it temporally and into the digital arena through the incorporation of frame interpolation and image based CGI within the film The Matrix (1999) and through view-morphing techniques pioneered by BUF Compagnie in music videos by Michel Gondry and commercials for, among others, The Gap.

In 2003, Bullet Time evolved further through The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions with the introduction of high-definition computer-generated approaches like virtual cinematography and universal capture. Virtual elements within the Matrix Trilogy utilized state-of-the-art image-based computer rendering techniques pioneered in Paul Debevec's 1997 film The Campanile Movie and custom evolved for the Matrix by George Borshukov, an early collaborator of Debevec.


Other early applications of the concept:

  • Speed Racer, 1967-1968. Opening sequence.
  • The Return of the Pink Panther, 1975. Inspector Clouseau practices kung-fu with Cato in slow motion.
  • Trancers, also known as Future Cop, 1984. This film features two slow motion scenes involving Jack Deth's actions. One of them involves him saving Helen Hunt's character from being shot.
  • Videoclip for Suede "The Wild Ones", 1994. Dir. Howard Greenhalgh. [3] [4]
  • Videoclip for The Rolling Stones "Like a Rolling Stone", 1995. Dir. Michel Gondry. [5]
  • Videoclip for Sting "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot", 1996. Dir. Emmanual Carlier. [6]
  • Videoclip for Smoke City "Underwater Love", 1996. Dir. Tim MacMillan [7]
  • "Little Bitty" Alan Jackson video 1996.
  • Videoclip for Coolio "C U When U Get There", 1996.
  • Video for Meat Beat Manifesto's "Helter Skelter '97", 1997, directed by Ben Stokes
  • "Landscape", 1997. This short computer animation by Tamás Waliczky won a prize at the 1998 Prix Ars Electronica cyberarts competition.
  • Videoclip for Van Halen "Without You", 1998
  • Videoclip for Garbage "Push it", 1998
  • The movie Lost in Space (1998) features a scene similar to bullet-time: When ship enters hyperspace, all the action freezes, but the point of view moves slightly in an arc.
  • The episode "Wink of an Eye" of the original Star Trek television series is entirely based on bullet-time: The villains exist exclusively in hyperspeed and attempt to utilize it to take over the starship USS Enterprise and her crew.
  • The music video for the song "Guilty Conscience" (from The Slim Shady LP) features Dr. Dre and Eminem speaking as good and evil consciences to three different men frozen in bullet time.
  • The film Wing Commander (1999) performed poorly at the box office, though the trailer gained some notice for its inclusion of the film's bullet-time scene, showing people, and a spilling cup of liquid, captured in mid-air.
  • Videoclip for Meat Beat Manifesto and title sequence for Howard Stern's televised radio program, both directed by Ben Stokes of the influential film/video/design consortium H-Gun
  • Videoclip for Korn "Freak On A Leash", 1998.
  • In Super Bowl XXXV, CBS employed a system of cameras that allowed for bullet-time-like effects on its broadcast. This system proved to be the difference in upholding a replay challenge on a Jamal Lewis fourth quarter touchdown by showing that he clearly broke the plane of the end zone. The bullet time was accomplished using cameras only, without any computer interpolating.
  • In the opening sequence of the IMAX documentary Michael Jordan to the Max, Michael Jordan executes a slam dunk in bullet-time while practicing at the United Center.

The phrase Bullet Time is a registered trademark of Warner Bros., the distributor of The Matrix. It was formerly a trademark of 3D Realms, producer of the Max Payne games.

References

  • Hendricks, Gordon (1961), written at Berkeley, California, The Edison Motion Picture Myth, University of California Press.

External links

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The Matrix series
The Matrix • The Matrix Reloaded • The Matrix Revolutions
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