Thinking about shooting a little movie...
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The biggest problem with filming the Matrix-Style I suggested would, in my opinion, being getting the people together.
Basic "Bullet-time" is easily done: 24 digital camera's mounted equally around a rail, fired electronically, will give you a one second "bullet-time" clip.. they all fire at once for the "stationary" bullet-time. Add capacitors to the wiring loop and you can slow the firing sequence down so you get "moving" bullet-time.
Simple, man-operated wire-rigs can get the "flying leaps" done.. wires are easily taken out these days.
I might knock something up myself.. see if the theory works.
Urban
Basic "Bullet-time" is easily done: 24 digital camera's mounted equally around a rail, fired electronically, will give you a one second "bullet-time" clip.. they all fire at once for the "stationary" bullet-time. Add capacitors to the wiring loop and you can slow the firing sequence down so you get "moving" bullet-time.
Simple, man-operated wire-rigs can get the "flying leaps" done.. wires are easily taken out these days.
I might knock something up myself.. see if the theory works.
Urban
Copyright really isn't an issue. Take the classic episode of Only Fools And Horses where Del and Rodney dress as Batman and Robin - no copyright infringement at all. They were pretending to be Batman and Robin, they weren't Batman and Robin. Same thing with the Matrix idea.
Besides, if it absolutely came to it, overdubbing dialogue when you've got the characters in paintball masks won't be too tricky
Urban - I think you're underestimating the technical difficulties involved mate! Bullet-time requires a bit of setting up, you can't just throw the cameras in a circle you've got to do it carefully, and the electronic firing could prove tricky. You'll then have to match the resolution and grain of the cameras to whatever format you shoot the movie in. Then you've got very jerky footage, and need to interpolate frames. The CG guy I work with has the software to do this, but when we tested it we had a lot of artifacts. We shot live action on set, which really doesn't work - you need to green-screen the bullet time, interpolate, then composite it into the scene. And as you've got a spinning camera, unless the character is spinning round a stationary background, you'll have to build an entire CG background! You could shoot green-screen then move the entire bullet-time rig onto the set, reshoot just the background, then CG out the rig, but that's not really a great idea.
And then of course green-screen and DV don't work together, you'll need to shoot 35mm or HD, then transfer and digitise. Expensive!
And the wire-rigs, well I've never tried them, but I'm sure you'd need an experienced team to make the action work. A bunch of guys pulling the rig without experience could be dangerous
If you do knock something up, let us see it! I'd also be interested in seeing other work you've done
Cheers
Matt
Besides, if it absolutely came to it, overdubbing dialogue when you've got the characters in paintball masks won't be too tricky
Urban - I think you're underestimating the technical difficulties involved mate! Bullet-time requires a bit of setting up, you can't just throw the cameras in a circle you've got to do it carefully, and the electronic firing could prove tricky. You'll then have to match the resolution and grain of the cameras to whatever format you shoot the movie in. Then you've got very jerky footage, and need to interpolate frames. The CG guy I work with has the software to do this, but when we tested it we had a lot of artifacts. We shot live action on set, which really doesn't work - you need to green-screen the bullet time, interpolate, then composite it into the scene. And as you've got a spinning camera, unless the character is spinning round a stationary background, you'll have to build an entire CG background! You could shoot green-screen then move the entire bullet-time rig onto the set, reshoot just the background, then CG out the rig, but that's not really a great idea.
And then of course green-screen and DV don't work together, you'll need to shoot 35mm or HD, then transfer and digitise. Expensive!
And the wire-rigs, well I've never tried them, but I'm sure you'd need an experienced team to make the action work. A bunch of guys pulling the rig without experience could be dangerous
If you do knock something up, let us see it! I'd also be interested in seeing other work you've done
Cheers
Matt
If I was talking about putting together a high-quality production piece then yes, I would definitly be underestimating the difficulties.
But I am talking about something that can be downloaded over the net, not viewed on a cinema screen.
We'd have to discuss just how jerky the bullet-time would appear to be. Most TV's run at 50hz, PC monitors at 60hz, and a lot of animation is done at 24hz. To me, 24 still shots focused on the same thing from equi-distant and equally spaced viewpoints should be fine for stationary bullet-time.
The grain and resolution is certainly an issue as far as matching the bullet-time to the rest of the action, but I'm reasonably confident that can be overcome.
The more I think about this, the more I'm seriously considering giving it a go... nothing special, just to test.
Urban
But I am talking about something that can be downloaded over the net, not viewed on a cinema screen.
We'd have to discuss just how jerky the bullet-time would appear to be. Most TV's run at 50hz, PC monitors at 60hz, and a lot of animation is done at 24hz. To me, 24 still shots focused on the same thing from equi-distant and equally spaced viewpoints should be fine for stationary bullet-time.
The grain and resolution is certainly an issue as far as matching the bullet-time to the rest of the action, but I'm reasonably confident that can be overcome.
The more I think about this, the more I'm seriously considering giving it a go... nothing special, just to test.
Urban
Urban, when I say the bullet-time would come out jerky, I'm not talking about frames per second. The jerkiness comes from the distance between cameras. You'll set the cameras up with the fastest shutter speed, so you'll get no motion blur from the moving object (in this case, probably the actor). Then you'll have a bundle of stills that you can string into a sequence. When you play it back it will be very jerky. The distance between cameras obviously contributes to this - place them very close together and it'll work a lot better, but then you'll need even more cameras! And if you haven't got the ability to interpolate frames, you'll run back the footage at 25fps (PAL), you'll only be able to run it at one speed, and there will be a jerkiness to it all.
Please by all means do it, it would be great to see what you come up with! I'm just giving you some input on the process and how it works.
Matt
Please by all means do it, it would be great to see what you come up with! I'm just giving you some input on the process and how it works.
Matt
Sorry, my mistake..
Yes, distance between the camera's will make a big difference to how jerky it looks. I guess it will mean experimenting to find the best spacing to achieve the desired effect.
Urban
Yes, distance between the camera's will make a big difference to how jerky it looks. I guess it will mean experimenting to find the best spacing to achieve the desired effect.
Urban
Have you that TV advert with the BulletTime effect around a swan? It's pretty jerky, but it works. That's about as good as it gets without interpolation.
Of course if you get 100 cameras and rig them so they're actually touching, as close as you can get them, I'd imagine you'd get a surprisingly smooth effect, and 4 seconds of bullet-time. The shot wouldn't swoop around the actor but you can maybe do a half turn. Without interpolation you're limited to playing back the footage "real time" (25fps), but it will work.
As you say, for downloading on-line it'll be OK.
Good luck and let us all see the results!
Cheers
Matt
Of course if you get 100 cameras and rig them so they're actually touching, as close as you can get them, I'd imagine you'd get a surprisingly smooth effect, and 4 seconds of bullet-time. The shot wouldn't swoop around the actor but you can maybe do a half turn. Without interpolation you're limited to playing back the footage "real time" (25fps), but it will work.
As you say, for downloading on-line it'll be OK.
Good luck and let us all see the results!
Cheers
Matt