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Bullet Time - the Art of Variable Speed Photography


Bullet time is a similar technique to Stop-motion animation, the main difference being the changing angle of a camera rather than the movement of a particular object. 

Stop-motion is an animation art that appears to give life to inanimate things and make natural the unnatural, sometimes demonstrating the impossible. It works by shooting a single frame of an object, then moving the object slightly, and then shooting another frame and so on and so forth.

Bullet time on the other hand is the extreme transformation of time and space - the capture of seemingly unfilmable events that are slowed down at a normal speed. This is almost impossible with one camera as it would have to move incredibly fast  (i.e. filming bullets) to keep up with a moving object, even in slow-motion. Technical variations include time slicing, view morping and virtual cinematography.

The first use of Stop-motion animation was in The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1897)by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton, in which a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life. Other films using the technique include The Corpse Bride, Fantastic Mr Fox and Wallace and Gromit - all of which are animated films. Many people relate Stop-motion Animation to Photography rather than Cinematography because it is frame-by-frame rather than film. However, in more recent years the combination of Stop-Motion and film has become more popular as technology has advanced.

The first use of 'Bullet time' however was in the 19th century by Eadweard Muybridge - which was before the invention of cinema! He used a line of cameras alongside a racetrack to capture the motion of a galloping horse as it ran past. Each camera was attached to a taut piece of string that strecthed across the track; as the horse galloped past, the camera took the photo.

Other uses of bullet time have featured in films such as: Olympia (1936), Speed Racer (1966), Lost in Space (1998) and Buffalo '66 (1998).

 
Perhaps the most famous use of Bullet time is presented in The Matrix (1999) 'Dodging Bullets' scene. A large number of still cameras were set up around the actor, and were fired sequentially. The actor moved in slow motion whilst the cameras captured the scene, enabling a seemingly fluid movement. 
 

 See here for the scene: Matrix Bullet Dodge
And here for the behind the scenes: The Making of the Matrix part 1
Once the scene was shot, software similar to morphing software interpolates between the images to allow the slow-motion feel. Due to this the editor was able to therefore slow down or speed up the action at will, creating a slow-motion feel to the sequence. Computer-generated backgrounds were then superimposed onto the film.
Bullet time is particularly effective as it captures a moment in time; the blink of an eye can become an entire sequence; the visually impossible becomes possible.



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