Matrix film analysis

The film is known for a visual effect known as "bullet time", which allows the person watching to explore a moment progressing in slow-motion as the camera appears to go around the scene at normal speed. This allows the audience to take in everything on screen as it may be of importance to the film or just simply be interesting.

The method used for creating these effects involved a technical version of an old art photography technique known as time-slice photography which i have researched however we would not be able to use this in our opening sequence as the technology is not available to us. A large number of cameras are placed around an object and triggered nearly simultaneously. Each camera is a still-picture camera, and not a motion picture camera, and it contributes just one frame to the video sequence. When the sequence of shots is viewed as in a movie, the viewer sees what are in effect two-dimensional "slices" of a three-dimensional moment. Watching such a "time slice" movie is similar to the real-life experience of walking around a something to see how it looks from different angles. The positioning of the still cameras can be varied along any smooth curve to produce a smooth looking camera motion in the finished clip, and the timing of each camera's firing may be delayed slightly, so that a motion scene can be watched (over a very short period of real time).

Some scenes in The Matrix feature a "time-slice" effect with completely frozen characters and objects. Film techniques improved the film and allowed for slow motion so it seemed as character movement was still in progress.