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Cool Matrix Filming Techniques
webword writes "Here's how those cool scenes from the Matrix were filmed (go here). Not that I want actually buy one of these cool cameras, but I hunted around to find out how to get one and how much they cost. You can get one here. This brings up a quick question: How are people keeping up with the latest and greatest filming techniques?" What? An advance in cinematography that doesn't involve a farm of Linux machines?
I just wanna know how Reeves dodged all those bullets from the AI killing machine. I think that could give me a mean edge on Quake Arena. =)
I thought the Matrix was great...when Keanu Reeves didn't speak or attempt to act. He has the most monotone, NON-emotional acting style of any actor in Hollywood. How does he get his parts? His acting was almost as bad as the famous Thespian scene from Seven by Mr. Brad Pitt--"What's in the baaaaaahxx!"
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
i wish i was first post guy
This is an application I would have no trouble seeing patented. A lone inventor out tinkering with cameras, comes up with a cool application. The guy deserves to make some money off this idea.
One click shopping comes nowhere near this.
The more you know, the less you understand.
How are people keeping up with newer, cooler filming techniques? They're inventing them! They're not watching other people, they're doing their own thing. I know this must seem extremely odd to a Linux user, to think of a human being as being capable of creativity and original action without looking at someone elses work or trying to catch up to someone else, but that's how its being done. The Matrix didn't copy its use of cameras from other movies, they had a creative vision and they GOT PAID to make that vision into reality. *I* paid them for it by seeing the thing in the theatre 4 times and I'm proud that I supported them. I'm sorry the Linux users are ashamed and probably felt like they sinned and corrupted the brothers by paying them, but trust me, the brothers are much more sane and dont' mind.
Someone told me the Matrix DVD has a special feature where you can click a rabbit and it'll show you how they did this.
There's your answer. Actually, I hate him but thought he was at least tolerable in this movie. He also fit the part in Point Break (I think thats it) pretty damn well. Other than that I can't stand him. Accent in Devil's Advocate anyone?
"How are people keeping up with the latest and greatest filming techniques?" Simple. They watch MTV (where the first video featuring the frozen-in-time effect was around 1995, though I forget who the artist was). Though the article was right: it's good that only a select few can do things like this, otherwise we'd see so much of this frozen effect (as it's been done already in Lost in Space and a multitude of music videos) that it would lose its spark. I personally would like to see more of an effort on writing than on camera angles, but that's just me.
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"Okay, who taught the cat how to type ctrl alt delete?"
This same thing was covered here last February. While I usually ignore reposts, it does get annoying. AFAICT, this was posted because it was on a "big" news site, and the poster didn't know it had been done before. /. doesn't owe us anything, but it never hurts to check.
How are people keeping up with the latest and greatest filming techniques?
Going back to blair witch.... the movie without the best techniques...
I waited a while to see that movie, and there was soo much hype, and everyone was saying how good that movie was.
I'm sorry, but it was a really bad movie.
I walked out of the movie, confused, feeling like i missed half the movie... was i the only one?
It is my understanding that they used a farm of FreeBSD machines for rendering special effects in The Matrix. You can read about it here:
http://www.freebsd.org/news/press-rel-1.html
Ben.
Actually, if you'd been paying attention, they used FreeBSD instead of Linux for the Rendering on the movie. If they used FreeBSD instead just for the rendering, why would they use it for the camera operation?
For those who still don't know, read this link.
These setups have been used in a lot of commercials recently too. The problem is, as always in the film industry, that the setup is much too expensive for small studios to pioneer some amazing things with them. Often it is the independent filmmakers who revolutionize techniques in cinematography, for they aren't afraid to experiment with techniques or styles.
I think we'll be moving more in this direction, in terms of filmmaking production, as well as satellite distribution to theaters. Viewers always wish to be awed, so I don't think this style will be a fad.
"In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche
By the way. If you like those green-falling-letters-screen, try the Matrix screensaver included in the xscreensaver. Also fun to run in your root-window :P
0x or or snor perron?!
on a harnes of some sort, they moved him to whatever position, its not a hard trick to do.
By the way. If you like those green-falling-letters-screen, try the Matrix screensaver included in the xscreensaver. Also fun to run in your root-window :P
0x or or snor perron?!
- take an slr camera
- expose a complete film with the lens cap on. The film is therefore at the end of its roll, yet no light has hit any frames yet.
- point the camera at some moving item, for example a person doing semaphore stylee things, with the camera on a tripod (it's probably a good idea to have the person against a neutral dark background)
- take off the lens cap!!!
- trigger the camera in long-exposure mode
- while you have the shutter open, wind the film back to the beginning at an uneven speed stopping occasionally.
- develop the complete film print, joining the adjacent prints into one single long picture.
What you will have is a single image with an uneven version of time across the image. When the film was moving fast then you get a pretty much blurred version of the image, but at the points where you stop the film movement you have frozen exposures of the object. If the object has a clearly developed movement from start to finish then you get a nice mix of space vs time.Like I said pretty off-topic, but quite an amusing thing to do in these long winter evenings. Thanks to Zoe Millington for coming up with the idea.
The only Good System is a Sound System
If you have The Matrix on DVD, there are some really good short documentaries about how they filmed those scenes. They show what the footage looks like before they fill in the "gaps" between the individual camera shots. There is also one about how they trained for and choreographed the kung-fu scenes.
Whoever thought up this technique was brilliant. The design is simple, but obviously *very* effective. Basically, the design is simply a row of cameras (usually circular with varying height) that film on a central position. The cameras are all exactly synched with eachother, and film simultaneously. During the editing process, the film from each angle is played at the same time, and frames from each camera are used as input to the final master. So say Camera 1 is at position A, Camera 2 is at position B, and Camera 3 is at position C. All three cameras are filming one central point. During editing, Frame 1 is taken from Camera 1, and the next two frames in succession are taken from the next two cameras, all from the SAME TIME POINT. (Since all cameras are exactly synched, you get 3 different angles of the same shot.)
When the editing is finished, the shot appears to rotate around the central film point.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
VFX Pro has two indepth interviews from last April with John Gaeta, the visual effects supervisor for The Matrix, regarding this new virtual cinematography technique, dubbed "bullet time" by the Wachowski brothers. One is here and the other is here.
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
http://www.virtualcamera.com/pressmain. html
Slashdot needs a rejected articles archive.
Or maybe a live view of the queue in which selected moderators rate the suggested articles higher or lower with, say, ten minutes to vote on each article after its initial submission. Then, when time is up, the article is posted automatically or thrown into the rejection pile.
What do you think?
--
Sam
Heck, I've been thinking about this for a while. I am currently rendering a small, stupid 3.5 second animation that does the "freeze-n-pan" thing used in the Matrix, all in POVray. After about 3:10 EST, you can go here and see the result. The source code will all be available here so people can see how I did it. I'm sure all the raytracing folks out there know exactly how to do this, but if non-raytracing folks are curious....
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
The various descriptions on the web site gave me the impression that a series of independent film or video cameras would have even more potential: Varying spacing to accellerate/decellerate the pan, varying positioning to pan in 3-D, switching to full motion at varying speeds at selected intervals, etc. And the authors appeared to understand this potential. So I wondered at the omission in the patent.
Then I checked some of the references, and discovered that such (at least with film) had already been patented before - far enough back that the patents are expired.
So it looks like doing this with an array of independent film cameras is prior art. Video cameras in any configuration except evenly-spaced along a straight or curved line (which is covered by claim 4) also appears to be open, and you might break claim 4 by treating it as a special case of the previous expired patent with the obvious substitution of video cameras for film cameras.
Essentially all the patent covers is a camera with many lenses and synchronized or sequenced shutters, projecting onto a common film strip, along with a multiple-video-camera model of it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's the best magazine out there on the subject. Cinefex. They finally have a website too.
stored on computers from birth to the grave
Lots of people have already mentioned the 'Making of The Matrix' on the DVD, but I just thought it would be worth pointing out that it's also on the videotape version. You don't have to go get a DVD player to see it, you just can't skip right to it by choosing chapter 19/22/whatever. I don't know whether there might be some stuff on the DVD that isn't on the tape, but it seemed pretty complete to me.
Good... bad... I'm the one with the gun.
ProofReading Markup Language - and yes, I find typos.
What's even more suprising is his posting habits -- almost ALL of his posts are at Score: 1, even though he has that ungodly amount of Karma.
This could either mean
a.) He doesn't want to bring attention to his posts by scoring them lower
or
b.) He wants to accumulate MORE karma by making it so that in the rare case he posts a TRULY insightful comment (nothing that's just rehashed from the original story, a la Signail 11 or whoever that is), he'll get upwards of +4 instead of +3.
One thing that I love about that (far overused) effect where they fly around the scene in slow motion is that you can capture consecutive frames and make stereograms of the scenes. I've made a couple of (granted, *very* low-quality) stereograms (cross your eyes to see them) from the movie, which I had fun doing... I think it'd be awesome to be able to watch the WHOLE MOVIE in true 3D tho... I wish that would catch on....
http://php.indiana.edu/~dgsharp/stereograms/
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
If my memory serves. There was a bunch of ice and other stuff too.
particulary when this posted here many moons ago (can't remember the article, too lazy to search for it...)
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
--
So, just as MS has ZDNET, Linux has /.
It's called balance, and I like it.
You do know that this site started as a linux-centric news site by Rob called "Chips and Dips", don't you?
Slashdot has always been Linux-centric, and if you had to read more than one or two articles to see that, then you are a moron...
http://www.virtualcamera.com/invention 2.html
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So now I feel kinda special since I have one of Matrix cameras. Yaaaay!
(side note, the difference between the EOS A2 and the A2E is that the E version has eye-controled focus, otherwise they are identical)
I know one of the people who did the R&D on bullet-time sequences in "The Matrix"; he recently gave a seminar at U.C. Berkeley along with Jon Gaeta where they discussed how the bullet-time sequences were done.
First, the difference between bullet-time sequences and the GAP commercial sequences is a big one:
Freeze-time shots (e.g., the GAP commercial) are easy to do. All shots are taken simultaneously of the scene, and you don't need to worry about the motion of the subjects in the scene.
Bullet-time shots actually have to move in very slow motion. At the seminar, they said that although they had many cameras firing sequentially over the camera path, they were unable to place cameras close enough together to capture sufficient frames during really slow segments of movement (if you watch The Matrix bullet-time sequences, you'll see that initially the motion starts out very slow, and gradually speeds up)
The way that Manex solved this was to use computer vision techniques to interpolate the necessary "in between" frames. This is especially difficult since the motion in some shots (i.e. Keanu Reeves' arm waving in a circle in the air) have motion that isn't linear (meaning that the compute can't simply compute the pixels along a straight line from one frame to another). Manex used a lot of combined interpolation techniques to achieve the results in the movie.
In addition, obtaining consistent camera lighting, film grain, and film speed parameters proved difficult. They used cameras that were all uniform in make and model, but had to image process the frames to achieve consistency.
Second, you may notice that all bullet-time sequences were captured on a green screen! One of the reasons they did this was because the angle of rotation is actually more than 180 degrees. (This is also a difference from the GAP commercial) So how did they insert the background?
Well the answer is, they re-created the backgrounds. Manex used image-based modelling and rendering techniques that were based on work done by Dr. Paul Debevec at U.C. Berkeley. You can read more about the FACADE photogrammetric modelling system and The Campanile Movie (which I helped work on) by following the link.
Manex's techniques greatly improved upon the work at U.C. Berkeley; they showed an OpenGL real-time demo of the sub-way and government building lobby shots from the movie at the seminar; very cool stuff.
Hope that sheds some light on how effects in The Matrix are really done.
-- Charles
Uh, Dude, that wasn't a farm of Linux machines. They used a farm of FreeBSD machines. It's a fact.
MBM's video for "Helter Skelter '97" (produced by H-gun, dir. Ben Stokes) was the first time I ever saw the technique. There's a link here for folks with QuickTime.
You have caught my act
Lure of trolling is too strong
Turn the girls to stone
New resolution:
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"Starting tomorrow"
Tomorrow then comes.
"I will never troll again"
"Starting tomorrow"
Karma comes and goes
First post, it is forever
Eat my dust, suckas
My statue Haiku
Is real controversial
It just makes me glad
"Post Anonymous"
I will not do it this time
Let mail-bomb begin!
Linux my ass.
Now that you got this idea started in my head, I'm going to have to go around video capturing everything and making stereograms. There goes the rest of my free time, thanks a lot :)
F0 07 C7 C8
You are a freak.
It used FreeBSD, which is open source.
I use both FreeBSD and Linux (including several
other Unices) on a daily basis... and cannot understand how people like yourself are SO closed
minded.
Operating Systems have nothing to do with the results of 3D modelling or rendering. They might as well use Sparcs, NTs or Alphas to render Matrix, it has nothing to do with the quality of the movie. Would it be less "top quality 3d and effects" as you mentioned if they used NT? No, the process would be slower, but the end-result would be exactly the same. In fact, they used Houdini and SoftImage on SiliconGraphics machines to do the work, FreeBSD was only used as renderfarm, not for editing/modelling. The editing and modelling IS the actual work, rendering is the process to see what the result of the work is.
By the way, The Matrix rules! Much better than a dumb propaganda-muscle-movie from Schwarzenegger.
cool, thx for the info.
fuck you, you are reason why open source has bad name.
they should have used linux for 3d modeling/animation. it is way beter than any sgi solution and cheaper. PRICE AND PERFORMANCE not closed source!
latest intel 3d is 500% better than any sgi video card. i saw one machine called SGI onyx2, it had crappy graphics and no match for my Riva TNT.
fact remains, matrix sucks because it wasnt done on linux. hollywood needs to support open source or get out.
and btw, freebsd is no open source, it is lame os that ripped off linux and made their own license. its not open source if its not GPL.
Come on!
am i the only one who finds the consistant pro-linux ignorance really annoying?
no, i dont think that making everything run on linux is a good idea. infact i think its a stupid idea that would surely leave us wrose off.
Fuck this "linux-centric" crap. Open Source is much more than Linux. So, for that matter, is news for nerds. Stop hating BSD. Embrace your brother.
I would think it shouldn't be too dificult to set up a series of cheap digital cameras to achieve the same kind of effect. Your finished product wouldn't have the same quality as real film but it would still be functional and fun to play with.
Just sync each of the digicams to pull frames from a designated section for the angle you want filmed. I envision a joystick type controller that would rotate your viewing angle thru the array of cams, pulsing the lead camera to shoot continuous and the camera on each side to catch every other frame for effect.
All of this would be combined downstream and easily manipulated in digital form. Then add in what ever else you need in the scene and you have a lower quality but still impressive piece of photography.
"I have a cunning plan..."
He seems to always play the clueless type who has odd things happen to him. So his very natural and naieve "what the hell just happened to me?" look helps him here. The Matrix is a shining example, so is The Devil's Advocate.
A friend of a friend of mine met Keannu Reeves. She is an actor, so she asked him how he goes about acting. He replied something to the affect of well, if you're going to play a Shakespearen role you have to (high pitch voice) talk like this (low pitch voice) and talk like this (hpv) up (lpv) down... Anyway, she thanked him and to this day makes fun of him. He's a terrible actor, even to a young student actor.
Sometimes looking good and being a bad actor help I guess.
Also, I never could figure out how they did they scene with the woman in red where they froze everyone in time until reading this. Can anyone elaborate more and how they varied the length of the exposure to produce that effect?
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
So the Matrix wasn't made WITH Linux, but what if it is running ON Linux! I always assumed this to be the case in the good-is-really-bad switcharoo that is the Matrix universe. All the bad guys in Neo's world are really the heroes, while the people who are often trusted and respected turn out to be tools of the machines.
With every advance in technology we seem to hear the same thing "Can I do it with Linux?". Often it that is the case. So wouldn't it be logical to assume that the first true AI could be running on Debian or PPC?
Just imagine, the tool of liberation becomes our new slavery.
Once you have the 3D-scene in the computer you are absolutely free to create any time/camera path/zoom/whatever variations one could imagine (and probably a lot more than anybody would imagine before he had used it for some time).
But I guess for things like this we still have to wait some time for enough processing power and good 3D-reconstruction programs (I have seen some, which are not really easy to work with (still lots of user interaction needed to get nice models even from simple scenes) and still don't bring really good results). But who knows, maybe we'll see things like that soon (or are there already spots using a similar technique?).
Christoph
Hey man, you know what my friend did? This was totally sick, but his cat was about to give birth to a bunch of kittens.. and he got out the old 8mm. You follow? Well, he was filming (in reverse) as half a dozen kittens came out into the light. Know what the finished movie looked like? I could not believe my eyes when i saw this footage playing across the wall from the projector... It was like they were crawling (or getting sucked) right back in there! Oh yeah, sorry this is so off topic, but i thought i'd go ahead and share that. It would be pretty messed up to see that sort of thing of somebody gorging on food, too. It would look like they were chucking it back up and putting it together into hamburgers!
Two other great sources of VFX news:
www.vfxpro.com
www.mediatechnology.com
and
Cinefex Magazine, available at Borders or Barnes and Nobles. Get 'em quick, though, they sell fast.
MY DAD IS GONNA BEAT YOU UP! MR BOB
Look at every small utility coming out nowadays, every company making pledges, and every diagnostic ever done to Linux and it's a server and only a server. Send an email to VA Linux with the word "video" in it and you'll be exiled from California forever. The guys whose job it is to promote Linux professionally are actually the most vehemently opposed to its use as a movie platform. They do not want it to be used for anything but a web server. It might be because the internet and the movie industry are at each other's throats. It might be because changing a marketing scheme which isn't broken is a bad idea. They sell web servers and they don't want Linux to get any other reputation.
The VirtualCamera site has been around for ages, in net time. I recall surfing it in mid to late '97.
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WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexx mmeeaann??
This sig intentionally left justified.
Just ignore the AC - he's just one person trying to sound like twenty. :\ Case in point: calling me a karma whore when I haven't even been moderated yet and that karma is no longer shown on the system. Hit up this and see for yourself.
If I'm not mistaken, this was featured a little less than a year ago.
first of all fill rate has nothing to do with 3d modeling and animation. so your tnt2 would fart and die in that area. next an onyx2 is like 5 years old. give me an octane with a r12k cpu. and how could freebsd rip off linux if freebsd was created first?
for those among us who are technologically superior, we shall rent Matrix on DVD. Then we shall skip to the "behind-the-scences" section. We shall then proceed to watch real footage of the development of those scenes from the footage. Then we shall laugh at the pitiful attempt by ABCNews to detail this fantastic method of cinematography. We shall. It's kinda like watching a monkey put out a housefire. Kinda.
~sig~He who waits for opportunity to knock will never hear the doorbell~end sig~
I saw a fair bit about this camera on Splat!, a show that comes on Teletoon here in Canada (I don't know if it comes on in other countries).
Basically, the guy who invented it is an engineering school dropout. They had an interview with him which was very interesting.
CineFX magazine is the best resource for 'how was it done' articles. Each issue highlights 3 movies and covers all effects, with production photos and interviews with the techs. It is a trade magazine, for the effects industry. It is hard to find copies. It is an odd-size magazine, about half the size of a regular one but bound on the short side.
Wow, those are awesome. Period.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
First of all, YES Linux is a server, but thats not all. The fact that linux is open source makes it ideal to configure it to perform whatever purpose you want (yes, even video editing). There is a version of Linux (called IRIX) which runs on SGI systems... IRIX is used for high end graphics and such. Dont be so closed minded. Unless i misunderstood your message
Every time I want "The Matrix", I get the urge to buy kakki pants and fall over backwards dodging bullets. Very strange!
Blair Witch is just telling a story with a simple but effective method..
Naturally, the typical 13 yr old is gonna think the Matrix is RaD..
That camera used a bunch (360!) of independent 35mm cameras, which could be arranged in a full 360 degree circle. This yields 12 seconds of film (at TV frame rates - 15 seconds at movie rates).
The cameras were controlled by a computer, which can assign a time delay to each camera independently. So, the system can be used to freeze a scene, do a "virtual dolly", do both, ramp the frame rate from any speed to any other speed, etc.
The reason for using this many cameras is that the quality of the final motion sequence is much better if you get the whole thing on film than it is if you have to do computer interpolation. Additionally, the cost of computer generating frames is VERY high.
So, the technical troubles with a multi-camera system are (in no particular order):
Synchronization: Even if you trigger a bunch of cameras at the same time, the shutters won't open at the same time. We call the delay "Lag Time", and it is dfferent for every camera we've tested. It doesn't matter if you have a consumer camera (Nikon N50, Canon EOS Rebel) or an expensive professional camera (Nikon F5, Canon EOS 3) - each individual camera, even the same model number - will have different timing.
Exposure: A previous poster mentioned the problems with subtle variations in exposure creating problems. Bingo! The trouble is that still cameras are meant to be consistent from frame to frame, not from camera to camera. Even a $2500 professional camera body will have variations of about +- 1/3 stop from camera to camera. When you sequencs these frames, the film looks like it was taken with a 1940's 8MM camera - bright/dark/flickery - terrible.
Lenses: Like the shutter, lenses can have a profound effect on the "look" of the frame. The exposure, color, and focus will be different from lens to lens. The denter of the frame will be fine, but the edges can be a problem (because of edge, the perspective warping of different lenses can be a bit, well, different)
Rotation / Focus / Setup: Remember, somebody has to point all the cameras at the right spot (or spots), focus them, possibly adjust zoom, etc. There's a whole lotta room for error here. Luckily, there's a machine, known as a rank, which is used to correct minor translations and rotations.
Spacing: Someone had mentioned that the cameras were too close together, thus requiring computer interpolation. Yup, that's a problem.
There are a few advantages to the multi-camera technique, as well:
Directional Flexibility: Each camera can be pointed at whatever you want. You can do pans, tilts, different zoom levels, freezes, virtual camera motion, etc. In fact, with 360 cameras, you could do them all in the same scene!
Timing Flexibility: This one says it all. Simple example: Go 30 frames/sec. on even numbered cameras, then freeze odds. The final film looks like a regular dolly around the subject for 6 seconds (subject is in motion), then we go around the subject for 6 seconds again while the action is frozen. Start doing speed variations and smooth timing curves, and you can get some interesting effects (want to see things happen in reverse time? go ahead. ...)
Well, I've wasted enough of your time and bandwidth. Just thought I'd tell people about the system that has done most of the freeze effects that have been done (about 75 shoots, versus 35 for all others combined).
Cheers.
I'm disappointed this ridiculous post actually got moderated to a Score of >>3. It's nothing but a spew of trite Linux/FreeBSD advocacy attacks and flames towards Emmett at a personal level. maybe it's time I set my viewing level even higher.
Shortly after I saw Matrix the first time, I started a new job.
My boss told me: "here, you need to read this book." The book: "Modeling the World in Data", by Shlaer and Mellor.
I got seriously creeped out by the title!
"They are guarding all the gates. They are holding all the keys. Which means, sooner or later, someone will have to fight them." -- sounds like Microsoft to me!
>matrix filiming sucked. very pathetic.
>if they used linux they would be on cutting edge of hollywood, just
>like titanic.
Crap. Matrix filiming sucked because the movie sucked. Want to see a really good and fun movie with great effects? Go to Blockbuster and rent either "A Chinese Ghost Story" or "Wing Chun". Both these movies make the Matrix look like the lame bullshit that it is.
MTV is non-free, binary-only and nagware, but
it seems to be the only *nix MPEG player that works
reasonably well...
You can get a copy at www.mpegtv.com.
--Kevin
=-=-=-=-=-=
"HELLO SMALL CHILD! WHO IS BACK! I HAVE THE RENEGADE MASTER WITH ME!"
From articles I've read on the making of Matrix and watching the extra footage of it's making that comes on the DVD and talking to a guy who worked on the film, I get the following:
Yes they did use a series of still cameras, yes they did then use a computer to interpolate some of the shots.
What also happened is that they used the computer to create a 3D model, based on the data from the different view points. Then they took the images in the shots, used them as textures on the 3D models and voila! they had a 3D model (well, lots actually, one for each cinema film frame). From this they could move the camera *anywhere* and were not constrained to the path of the original cameras. This enabled them to follow all sorts of new camera paths (except where texture data was missing).
This is a major step forward! As someone else mentioned, they also computer rendered the background. On the DVD you can see the wireframe models and incomplete renderings of the subway station.
pithy comment
Just for those who don't want to go reading everywhere else...
The really impressive thing about those Bullet Time sequences is not really the camera setup (and yup, they were Canon EOS) - which is one of those ideas that several people seem to have come up with at once - but rather the frame interpolation work Manex did, as explicated in the article above. That was truly flawless stuff, as the individual character elements (live action plates) of Keanu, et. al had frames rendered by a puter to complete the range of motion in an automated fashion.
But even more impressive is that the background plates for those shots were also developed from photographic stills - taken from several different angles on the set or location, and a computer then developed 3 dimensional geometry so that there was a model of said set and textured properly without having to do it by hand. The potential application of this for filmmaking is enormous, and a massive step towards the truly virtual set.
I'm really, really hoping Manex clinch the Oscar this year, for their work truly was groundbreaking as opposed to the Phantom Menace team who refined existing techniques to, admittedly, unbelievable highs. However, none of their work really goes out there in terms of future potential apps. It's a given, though, that ILM will be getting the lil statue this year. Tis a pity.
And for anyone who wants to read about FX advancements, the Bibles are Cinefex, VFXpro, and ALWAYS, American Cinematographer. Read em and weep.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
they should have used linux for 3d modeling/animation. it is way beter than any sgi solution and cheaper. PRICE AND PERFORMANCE not closed source!
So what you're saying is that someone is a more talented designer if he uses Linux instead of IRIX to create 3D? You're really a stupid dumbshit and should excuse to all the talented 3D artists out there. What the fuck has open source has to do with artistic modelling talent? If the artists design the stuff and rendering it on another platform, it won't render Keanu's jacket blue instead of black. Look at what you just posted! Moron...
I think the music video "Let your soul be your pilot" used this technique in 1996... :-)
The newly re-released CD "Mercury Falling" contains this video (Extended(?)-CD). Cool stuff
Seems strange that Peter Gabriel didn't do it before!
:o)
-- yippee, my first post! --
Is that a PC only extended disc?
If memory serves me correctly, I believe that the same company who produces the freezeframe camera setups also worked on the effect in the 'Holiday' GAP ads (www.adcritic.com), the same one seen in the Chemical Brother's video 'Let Forever Be' (a very good vid, check it out if you get a chance) which were both directed by the same person, I think. Just an interesting note on the cool visual effects these folks are putting out.
"and btw, freebsd is no open source, it is lame os that ripped off linux and made their own license. its not open source if its not GPL."
This is what happens when RMS drinks donated "free beer" for the holidays.
&sign($AC[0]);
There is a way to do this with a standard camera. I have seen it done, I rember watching ZDtv one day and they had a special on how to do it. You have to to the SAME motion 3 times, and shoot it with the same camera at 3 diffrent positions. Then you plug the video into a computer and VAULA you get those cool affects. I would like to find a website on how to do it again. If anyone knows where one is, please post it.
And if you really want to know how it's all done, look at The Matrix DVD. It's really all very cool. I read alot about this stuff when I saw the Van Halen video. I think that was the first thing I ever saw on TV that had the "freeze scene, rotate camera" stuff. Then The Matrix came out, and I was very impressed. Anyway, check out the DVD.
"Part of the reason Alien and Jaws work is that when you see Jaws at the end, you think, 'Holy shit, that's a big fuckin
I was going to get the Matrix screen saver, but they only provide MacOS and Windows version. IIRC, someone mentioned Matrix screen saver for Linux before. Does anyone know where to get it (or any similar one)? I know this sounds pretty silly, I think the matrix font on the LCD is pretty cool too, which X font would you recommend to use with xterm for similar effect? :)
This wouldn't seem to apply to the similar (but different) technique called "Bullet Time" used in The Matrix. That's why the action freezes in both the Gap commercial and the earlier British commercial that used this technique, but doesn't in The Matrix.
In TM, they used some neat software to choreograph the shot, then placed groups of carefully-timed cameras all around the shot. Using high-speed still cameras allows you to get shots of bullets moving through the air, people falling, dodging bullets, leaping through the air, etc. See the four "making of" bits at the end of the home release for more detail.
They also mixed in some nice image-based rendering of buildings as well. My impression from interviews is that they used absolutely no camera shots of buildings in the bullet dodging and helicopter sequences. All of that was supposedly rendered from 3D models of the actual buildings.
Actually, the technique is much more general than that. They choreograph it using computer models, and place the cameras however they like. It can track moving objects just as well--you just need a larger green-screen stage.
I'm just a movie/FX geek and not actually in the industry, but I'm particularly fond of Cinefex magazine (20th anniversary issue on sale now!) and the VFX Pro news site. And, yes, Cinefex is expensive for a magazine, but sooo worth it.
-j
PS-- Ebert covered this months ago. Also, if you go to the visual fx part of the matrix site you can see 3 movies-- the original filming, with all the camers in view, then a matted-out version, then the final version seen in the film. Sadly, these aren't on the DVD, even though it has the original website on the disc. (I dunno, I was at the site pretty early... musta been v1.1. :-( )
The xmatrix module has some commandline options to allow you to adjust its behaviour. Among other things, I changed the font to be smaller which I felt looked more realistic on my display.
...which I in fact wrote. It's not just exposure differences between different shutters - we were doing *very* short exposures (because we didn't want the motion blur as it would be incorrect (think about it!)) which means you lose out on the time averaging effects of long exposures. This meant that we had problems from flickering light sources too. These effects were localised on particular features so we couldn't do an overall exposure shift but something more complex. Some of the cameras also had beam splitter prisms in them and these changed the overall exposure too. (It looked like on one day's shooting the film wasn't all from the same batch so there were differences there too.) We also had to `stabilise' the images so that they didn't jump about all over the place and then at the end synthesise the motion blur that was missing from the original. All in all a lot of hard work!
-- SIGFPE
Hey, I (mostly) enjoy reading Sig11's comments, if you don't like his comments, don't read them, if you can ignore 'f1r5t p05t', you can just as easily ignore a post by sig11, or is this just a case of envy at his karma?
You are not me, therefore you are not important
Thanks for the info, great links!
A little correction: You left out an 'e' in the Cinefex link, it must (obviously) be http://www.cinefex.com.
In case someone from the future is researching the hi-end imaging/computers
http://www.smpte.org/
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!