suspended in air or you want them to slow down as the camera rotates around them?

"Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write 'War and Peace' in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling." - Stanley Kubrick

I don't think suspending the actors would work, because you would still be able to see movement, In the matrix (and most other places they use this effect) they don't actually suspend the actors, but have several cameras placed around in a circle, to all take a frame at the same time, they then use digital effects to pan between the cameras, low budget films would find this impossible to do. (Although you could try using digital still cameras instead of film cameras, should be a lot cheaper to rent a bunch of those, not sure how you'd get them taking the photo all at the same time though)

What you can do, is move the camera quickly (and if possible increase the frame rate in-camera) and then slow it down in post, this creates a similar effect, except that time doesn't actually stop, but just slows down.

You might also try a handful of friends with digital cameras. Countdown, three, two, one. Jump and click.

Might turn out to be unusable and terrible but you never know until you try.

Another thing you can do is pose your actor in front of a green-screen painted wall on a turntable of some kind. Spin the turntable so the actor spins in front of the camera in that pose. Then you can worry about spinning around on location with your camera in order to have something to put into the greenscreen.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

quote:

---

Spin the turntable so the actor spins in front of the camera in that pose.

---

Uwe Boll did the opposite in 'House of the Dead' by having the actors stand on a platform and moving a camera around them. Fortunately saner heads prevailed after that movie and realised that having an actor standing on a platform while a camera whizzed around them at 60mph was not the safest idea ever :).

Suspending them in mid air might be cool, but just slowing the camera down while panning around them may be enough.

--QD Jones

Another question:

The scene at the end of the first Matrix where Neo is fighting Mr. Smith. Neo's arm is moving super fast but the rest of him is in normal time. Can anyone think of a way to duplicate this shot? Not exactly the same shot, just one part of the actor in real time and the other sped up.

--QD Jones

shoot the same thing twice, except once you put the camera in a different speed, then in post cut them together. probably easiest if in one shot you case the actors fast moving half in green, and the other half in the other shot. I think that should do it, would still be hard though.

I just saw house of the dead and the effect created wasn't much different than the multiple camera technique if you set the cameras to shoot in sequence instead of simultaneiously. Not sure why he bothered.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

quote:

---

Not sure why he bothered.

---

I'd guess it was quite a bit cheaper than the multi-camera system.

Another way to do it...

Create special pants. Put the real legs in green-screen colored pants and then add fake legs attached to the characters waist in the characters normal pants color. Then get another guy dressed all in green-screen color to help move and manipulate the fake legs. If done right the effect is that the fake legs are his and that the person is floating and doing crazy manuevers. Do it in front of a green screen and you won't have to move the camera and can match it all up to background footage later.

Check out 'Matrix Pong' and watch the little film for an example of the idea done live, using black and a black background instead of greenscreen.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/matrixpong.html

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

What would be the easiest way to get the two cameras to be shooting the exact same shot? How would you set up the cameras?

--QD Jones