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Cool Matrix Filming Techniques 155

Posted by emmett from the kung-fu-camera dept.
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?
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Cool Matrix Filming Techniques More

Cool Matrix Filming Techniques

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  • Q3A (Score:1)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 )
    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. =)
  • 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.

  • Keeping up with filming techniques (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.
  • "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.
    ------------
  • This same thing was covered here [slashdot.org] 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.
  • I agree there....His prime example of horrendous acting was Johnny Mnemonic...the only movie where non-sentient, fake computer equipment upstaged the star :)

  • Farms of Linux Machines? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

  • Unix Involvement (Score:3)

    by bifrost ( 45323 ) on Sunday January 02, 2000 @09:13AM (#1415748) Homepage
    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?
  • What? An advance in cinematography that doesn't involve a farm of Linux machines?

    For those who still don't know, read this [air0day.com] 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.

  • I might be wrong, but the camera's i saw in the-making-of-the-matrix on TV were a little different; they used an array of digital camera's which all took a single picture while those camera's seem to take a lot of pictures on a normal film which runs along each camera. Extremely cool indeed. I believe there was a photo session about those cams somewhere on WhatIsTheMatrix [whatisthematrix.com]. I also heard this technique has already been patented by those two brothers that did the matrix.

    By the way. If you like those green-falling-letters-screen, try the Matrix screensaver included in the xscreensaver [jwz.org]. Also fun to run in your root-window :P

  • he was (Score:1)

    by jrs ( 27486 )
    on a harnes of some sort, they moved him to whatever position, its not a hard trick to do.
  • I might be wrong, but the camera's i saw in the-making-of-the-matrix on TV were a little different; they used an array of digital camera's which all took a single picture while those camera's seem to take a lot of pictures on a normal film which runs along each camera. Extremely cool indeed. I believe there was a photo session about those cams somewhere on WhatIsTheMatrix [whatisthematrix.com]. I also heard this technique has already been patented by those two brothers that did the matrix.

    By the way. If you like those green-falling-letters-screen, try the Matrix screensaver included in the xscreensaver [jwz.org]. Also fun to run in your root-window :P

  • There's a red pill in the background. Click it, and they go into "The Making Of...". Clever.

  • oops...submitted this comment twice since /. gave an error-message the first time. moderate this one down please :)

  • Cheaper things with time and cameras... (Score:3)

    by fingal ( 49160 ) on Sunday January 02, 2000 @09:18AM (#1415756) Homepage
    Slighly offtopic, but still quite fun:-
    • 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.

  • That's true. In addition to the "Making of" special that was shown on HBO, the DVD has a special showing how "bullet time" was done. It shows stage by stage, from the setup of the cameras, to the jumpy shot done in front of a green screen, to the final composited scene. "What is Bullet Time?" is chapter 19 or 22 (both work), and you might want to also check out chapter 33, which is a behind-the-scenes about the rooftop fight.
  • 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.
  • It has already been patented by those brothers that filmed The Matrix. At least that's what they told me in TheMakingOfTheMatrix on TV.
  • I think that his mono-emotional attitude is a desireable characteristic when trying to portray a "computer hacker" in the film industry. It seems to work too, Johnny Mnemonic and the Matrix both did quite well, so in the eyes of the film industry, they've hit a desireable combination - even though this type of ficticious character is the exact opposite of reality.

    I've seen this BS too many times to count. It's like asking why the media likes to attach itself to tragedies like the "school-shooting craze."

    Computer geeks are viewed as being uncolorful, and while this may be true for some, I know personally I come across as un-mono-tone as possible.

    I realize this discussion isn't on Keanu Reeves as a bad actor, but I had to set it straight!

  • Nothing Spectacular (Score:3)

    by Accipiter ( 8228 ) on Sunday January 02, 2000 @09:27AM (#1415762)
    This is nothing new. As a matter of fact, there's actually a really cool Behind-the-scenes featurette on the Matrix DVD. They actually show each step of the process, from the camera circle / GreenScreen, to the Computer rendering of the walls, to finished product. Good stuff.

    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?

  • WAY Better Articles on Virtual Cinematography Here (Score:3)

    by Drog ( 114101 ) on Sunday January 02, 2000 @09:29AM (#1415763) Homepage
    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 [vfxpro.com] and the other is here [vfxpro.com].
  • It's offtopic...but doesn't the fact that you were confused mean that it was a good movie? I was quite impressed by the fact that this movie could really scare me with such a simple story and such simple techniques. I also think they did a real good acting job. Remember the girl talking to her mother while she was crying and believed that she was going to die? That was *GOOD* (in my opinion).

    http://www.blairwitch.com/ [blairwitch.com]

  • Are there any online examples of this technique? I don't have a camera, but I'd love to see what this looks like... :)

    Reminds me of some fun you can have with a microphone and a simple wav recorder/editor. You sample yourself saying something ("pistachio" is a good one), then reverse it. Then sample yourself trying to say it like you hear it reversed. Fun ensues.
  • 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?

    --
  • 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 [umich.edu] and see the result. The source code will all be available here [umich.edu] 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....
  • I noticed when reading it that it made four claims. Three related to a linear array of "cameras" (i.e. lenses) working on a single strip of film. The fourth substituted "video storage means" for the film, apparently implying substituting video cameras for the row of lens/box "cameras".

    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.

  • It's the best magazine out there on the subject. Cinefex [cinefex.com]. They finally have a website too.
  • 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.
  • 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/

  • particulary when this posted here many moons ago (can't remember the article, too lazy to search for it...)
  • I also post just about everything at 1, not 2. I do not see anything wrong with this. Besides A and B, there is also C: "If the post is good, it will be moderated up. If it isn't good, it shouldn't be moderated up. Either way, it's not for me to decide."

    --

  • Although I am not sure if this was how they planned it, or whether or not Keanu is a good actor...

    Isn't that how hackers are supposed to look like in real life?!

    Also, let us not forget the fact that he is a bit stunned by this my-life-isn't-real idea... :)

    --

  • Some more info, and a few pictures...

    http://www.virtualcamera.com/invention 2.html [virtualcamera.com]

    --

  • My friend and I were watching the matrix documentary on the DVD, and we saw the whole array of cameras they were using. They looked a bit familiar, so we froze it and held up my Canon EOS A2E (which looks identical) and it looked just like the cameras they were using. The interesting thing is that these camera have a very distinctive back, with a dial and four buttons, just like mine. :-)

    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)

  • Cameras are only a tiny part of the story (Score:5)

    by cying ( 132283 ) on Sunday January 02, 2000 @10:16AM (#1415783) Homepage

    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 [berkeley.edu] at U.C. Berkeley. You can read more about the FACADE photogrammetric modelling system and The Campanile Movie [berkeley.edu] (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

  • You have to understand, Mr. Plant is a dyed in the wool Linux advocate. So, from his perspective, if it's not using GNU/Linux its not cool. (And if it happens to be cool, it MUST be an accident.) So, keep this in mind when he writes on a topic.

    The comment "What? An advance in cinematography that doesn't involve a farm of Linux machines?" was a jab at FreeBSD. Note the only OpenSource-Matrix reference commonly published is the BSD farm used for graphic rendering.

    Given this quote from TimeTrack s own web page:
    "We even have an optional mechanical shutter system which requires no electrical power."
    It would seem the use of GNU/Linux technology for this camera system is a situation where the extra technology is not needed.

    Trying to put your choice of technology where it is unneeded is the hallmark not of advice, but the same kind of tactic Microsoft uses....that of "All problems look like a nail(microsoft part number x-095687-002) and you hit it with a hammer(microsoft part number 94374)"

    For him, the OpenSource movement is Linux, and not the OpenSource movement has Linux as a part of the movement.

    (For everything bad said about Mr. Stallman, at least he has respect for others. When Mr. Stallman was looking for his access badge, Mr. Plant told him that he should tell the guard "he was Richard fucking Stallman, and didn t need a badge." Mr. Stallman pointed out that why should he make the guard s life difficult. The guard is only doing his job.)
  • Sure, the general consensus is that Keanu is a lousy actor. I can grant as much, and in fact, I was deeply scared that his Bill&Tedified acting style was going to put a severe crimp in my ability to enjoy what the trailers portrayed as a kick-ass flick.

    I was pleasantly surprised. I think his "mono-emotional" and general appearance as Dude-With-Severe-Lack-Of-Clue worked very well for him in his role as Neo... a character who spent most of the movie without a Clue, and trying desperately to cope with the changing world around him. Not much of a stretch. The problem came when Neo finally got a grip on the Matrix at the end of the movie. That's when I was unable to think of Keanu's flat affect as being appropriate to the character.

    This could be a major problem when the sequels are filmed... unless someone shells out for lessons for our man Reeves. Donations, anyone?

  • No, it was Meat Beat Manifesto (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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 [hgun.com] for folks with QuickTime.
  • I believe it was a Rolling Stones video?

    it's the new "morph", one of those rare advances that is actually new, and not just a rehash of something old, which will start popping up everywhere until we are all sick of it.

    Still, the matrix work was very cool, and added something to the art:

    Only the actors were shot with the timeslice technique, in front of blue screen. the backgrounds were digitally created later, and rendered with camera moves that matched the blended camera 'move' around the actors.

    it was 360 degrees, which is impossible without the bluescreen (well, not impossible, but requires a lot of paintbox work and/or difficult and limiting camera positions to reduce visibility) Some was still required on the matrix, but not much.

    Very cool, be interesting to see how they can top it in the two sequels.

  • Re:Other camera's (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually, I believe its John Gaeta that designed and patented the Bullet Time technique, rather that the Warshawskis themselves. Also, the important part of the Bullet Time idea is that previous uses have been firing all the cameras at once, to freeze the scene while the pan happens, while in The Matrix they can slow down time, and interpolate between the photographed images using 3D software as well.
  • ok, green screen. same general technique. doh.
  • 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 :)
  • man, you are taking an unrelated flip comment way too seriously...I wish things like this didnt make it up past my viewing level
  • 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.
  • For everything bad said about Mr. Stallman, at least he has respect for others.

    Come on. Let's keep the Linux-BSD competition a friendly sportive one, it should not been carried out at the personal level.

    Anyways thanks for that RMS [lemis.com] story. By the way, he does not crumble to dust if brought in contact with BSD, as this link [lemis.com] from an Australian Unix user group meeting proofs. :-)

    Here is the caption:
    Peter Wemm trying to convince Stallman to adopt the Berkeley Licensing conditions. You'll notice (but not recognize) that Stallman is holding a FreeBSD CD-ROM set in his right hand. It obviously doesn't taste as good as the Australian wine in his left hand.

  • 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.
  • As anyone who has ever photographed a picture before can tell you, just a tiny difference in the exposure settings - aperture, shutter speed, flash level, film type - will produce a dramatically looking picture. I've seen the setup they used on the Matrix on "Making of the Matrix" on the DVD, and basically it looked like a whole bunch of Canon EOS-1N RSs strung together in an ascending circular fashion (for the Trinity scene). I'm curious how they ensured that all the colors and shadow/highlight detail matched perfectly with what they were filming so they could do a seamless transition from filmed footage to effect. Obviously, I guess they locked the exposure details, but what about film? Do they load the cameras with film stock and just shoot on that? Is computer correction involved?

    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?

    --

  • 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.

  • To your first question, Manex developed custom software to perform color correction, film grain, and other lighting corrections on the recovered frames.

    To your second question, I believe it was just a single still taking from one camera viewpoint. They may have "idled" the frame (where you capture 4-7 frames very close together and loop them to fix film grain problems and to give a bit of "movement" to the eye.

  • I guess the most flexible solution would be to have several cameras filming the scene from different angles, having some (quite big) cluster of computers to calculate a 3D-representation of the scene and render everything in the computer. So you can do exactly what you want. I don't know how many cameras one would need to create a decent 3D model, but I guess it should be less than you need for a technique described above (for a not too complicated scene).

    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.

  • 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.
    ------
    WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexx mmeeaann??
  • 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 [slashdot.org] and see for yourself.

  • If I'm not mistaken, this was featured a little less than a year ago.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • oops- Name of the magazine is Cinefex- their website is www.cinefex.com [cinefex.com]
  • Wow, those are awesome. Period.
  • 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
  • I actually thought he did a good job at the end too... The calm, subdued (spelling?) power is great IMO... He comes across as very confident to me, which is just how I think he should have been. Anything more would have been obnoxious IMO...

    shaft

  • Eye Candy != Storytelling (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Blair Witch and the Matrix are on absolute opposite ends of the spectrum, kids. One's totally minimalist, the other has all the bells & whistles. Thing is...would you be ranting & raving about the Matrix if it didn't have the n33t0 fX? Not a chance... But that's not to say it 'sucked ass'

    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..

  • Everyone must be using Unix today to be anyone. Since when did you see Windoze or even a Mac (that wasn't called; a "great Unix system") in a major motion picture? Why spend for Silicon Graphics when Linux or FreeBSD will do fine?

    I use both systems (and more) and swear by them. Windoze just crashes and so does Mac. Not really the things movies are made of, is it?

    In addition to 'getting the job done', you have to allways show the people something different. Can anything but the "big X" occupy this position?

  • Technical aspects of this technique (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02, 2000 @01:15PM (#1415831)
    Actually, the Manix camera is a smaller version of a camera that we developed for Big Fish Films [bigfreeze.com] (or Check here [bigfish.net]) in 1997, and which we are refining now.

    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.
  • After about 3:10 EST, you can go here and see the result.

    Nice MPEG movie. However, my mpeg_play and xanim seem to get something related to "interlacing" wrong. What do you guys use for playing mpeg movies?

    Roger.
  • If you'd been paying attention, you would have noticed that I was referring to advances in cinematography as a whole, and not just for The Matrix. I never said they used Linux on The Matrix.

    --Emmett

  • 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!"
  • Be sure and email me if you make any good ones! I'd love to see'em! :) I just started making a couple of new ones for my site from

    http://www.virtualcamera.com/samplework.html

    which has some good fly-arounds of stuff from commercials they've made. I'd love to have 2 FireWire video cameras and strap them together, and film a short movie or something... =) Get some good polarized filters and two nice digital video projectors, and some polarized glasses..... NICE. =)

    You can "exctract" the third dimension from just about anything if you're careful. Someone turns their head, a car drives by... Problem is getting a good clean couple of frames to choose from where no other objects move and stuff. And if you're filming them yourself, you've gotta be careful if you "circle" your target, because it can screw things up, making it hard to see (as I found out the hard way ;).

    One movie I'd love to try this with is Enemy of the State, as they panned like crazy in that movie (not to mention a couple of the "fly-arounds"). I'd love to see anything you come up with tho. :) (It's a shame my video capture setup sucks so much... if anybody's got The Matrix on DVD and would mind making a few NICE resolution versions of the ones I made... DO IT! Geekkind will thank you! :)
  • >There is a version of Linux (called IRIX)

    Umm....IRIX isn't Linux (yet? ;)...
    It's a UNIX flavor, but defintely not Linux.

    --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.

  • 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 [cinfex.com], VFXpro [vfxpro.com], and ALWAYS, American Cinematographer [cinematographer.com]. Read em and weep.

  • I often wonder how far I could go in Hollywood if only *I* had Keanu's agent...
  • 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?
  • "but doesn't the fact that you were confused mean that it was a good movie?" What does that have to do with it being a good movie? It either meant the movie sucked or he/she wasnt paying close enough attention. The movie wasnt as good as everyone made it out to be, highly over rated. It just goes to show you that any idiot with a camera can make a million dolloar movie.
  • However, my mpeg_play and xanim seem to get something related to "interlacing" wrong.

    Odd, since I used mpeg_play to verify that the stupid thing got encoded right. I have a very recent version taken from freshmeat, and also called the thing with -dither color and -quality on. *shrug*

    The next poster was right about mtv. though it's nagware and closed, I might have to shell out its fee to watch video clips...

  • I read an article a while back in either Popular Photography or PHOTO graphic about a guy who simply set up 40 or so regular 35mm SLR cameras on tripods in a circle, and had them all synched to a radio shudder release. Dude does his super-duper karate kick, all the shutters go off at once. Fill in the "in-between" with a good morph program, and key in the background over the chroma-blue painted camera bodies. Has anyone else heard of this? It seems a simpler way to do it than threading film through a giant array of lenses.

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • I'm not sure if this was before or after that, but it was also used in the indie film Buffalo 66, with Vincent Gallo and Christina Ricci.
  • 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.
  • I have to differ with you here. Nobody here is trying blindly to run everything on Linux. I, as well as any other reasonably competent computer person, realize that every OS has it's strengths and weaknesses.

    No, Linux isn't suited to every application. However, as a somewhat non-mainstream OS, it does need pushing for what it CAN do. I would be interested in hearing your reasoning, though. Please enlighten us as to what you think is wrong with it. The ability to correct weaknesses is one of the strongest points of Open-source OSes.

    Also, while I don't mean to criticize, you will probably find that more people take your opinions seriously if you make an effort to make your sentences gramatically correct and properly capitalized. After all, on the Internet, the only things people can judge you on are your opinions and your typing.

  • That is how David Lynch recorded the dialog in dream sequences on Twin Peaks.

    The actors would speak in reverse order syllables and the audio would be reversed in the editing room. The result was a very weird, dreamlike sound.

    You can probably find a video of Firewalk With Me at your local video store, if you're interested in this.

  • Everyone must be using Unix today to be anyone. Since when did you see Windoze or even a Mac (that wasn't called; a "great Unix system") in a major motion picture? Why spend for Silicon Graphics when Linux or FreeBSD will do fine? Trouble is, of course, is that FreeBSD ir Linux won't do just fine, except for in-house/developed renderers in a server environment. That is, back-end, not production, which requires a good OpenGL environment and applications for 3D. Here, SGI, MacOS, and even NT are infinitely better than the Freeuixes.
  • Sorry to be so long posting a reply, got seperated from my web connection - most traumatic...

    Anyway, I don't know of any examples on line at present, but I'll try and get in touch with Zoe who did the original thing and get a scan and mail it to you. All very trippy and most amusing.

  • The voice of "Joshua" the computer in War Games was done similar to this. I always thought they actually had some sort of computer voice generator, but I learned from the director's commentary track on the DVD that they faked it. They used John Wood's (Prof. Falken) voice, only they wanted the inflection to sound artificial, so they had him read the words backwards. Then they clipped each word and put all the pieces back together in order. Finally they ran it through some distortion/effects circuitry to give it a more artificial voice. I think the results are wonderful. Ever since then I've wanted a computer that could talk like that, but getting even the most sophisticated voice synthesizer to speak with a sort of distorted English accent with bad inflection is nearly impossible.

    I wonder if John Wood is available to record my answering machine message?

  • I was going merely to pooh-pooh this comment... until I saw who'd written it. You're perhaps the only person I'll accept that opinion from.

    But where do you come by it?

    And where has your website gone? :-)

    Cheers,
    -- jra
    -----
  • How are people keeping up with the latest and greatest filming techniques?

    I'm just a movie/FX geek and not actually in the industry, but I'm particularly fond of Cinefex magazine [cinefex.com] (20th anniversary issue on sale now!) and the VFX Pro [vfxpro.com] news site. And, yes, Cinefex is expensive for a magazine, but sooo worth it.

    -j

  • I have decided that if you put Keanu Reeves and Catherine zeta-Jones in a movie together, they would create a black hole of stupidity. Hell, just put 'em in a room together!
    now... who else could we fit in that room??
  • That "naive" acting style was a nightmare to experience in "A Walk with the Clods" yeesh! I had to endure that with a date who was, of course, drawn to the film due to Reeve's looks.

  • As an example of the exposure differences they had to deal with, check out http://smaug2.whatisthematrix.com/dld/NUMBER_TWO.m ov [whatisthematrix.com] and compare frames 49 & 51 (which are similiar) to frame 50 (which is rather darker than either of the other two).

    This might be a QuickTime artifact, or it might be real. Either way, this sort of thing is probably the simplest of all the problems they had to compensate for.
  • 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!
  • 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?
  • 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.

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