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Bullet Time Rig Made With a Ceiling Fan

May 10, 2013 by Udi Tirosh 11 Comments

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Back in 1999 the Wachowskis and Keanu Reeves introduced a something new with The Matrix – Bullet time effect. The idea was to show the time flow from a bullet perspective. Since time is relative, bullets moving in mundane speeds meant everything else really slows down. This trick allowed Reeves to dodge bullets, and to ponder about the existence of spoons.

Bullet Time Rig Made With a Ceiling Fan

In the matrix the effect is achieved with tens of cameras shooting in succession or simultaneously, and in the final edit a sequence is made by grabbing a frame from each camera. Even today making a full 360 bullet time can be really expensive.

but for smaller objects Mark Rober found a way to spin a camera really fast to get a similar effect. Mark hooked a rig to a ceiling fan using its high speed rotation for swift camera placement. A set of lights was placed on the rig so they are stationary in relation to the camera. the last ingredient was a  GoPro Black set to shoot 240fps slow-mo. Mark was able to capture some amazing bullet time footage.

Here is Mark’s description of the project:

“I shot all off this footage with a GoPro HD Hero 3 at 240 fps. NO TWIXTOR!!!… but I did you use After Effects smooth motion thing in parts which is pretty much the same thing… it just seems like writing NO TWIXTOR is like a badge of honor for slow mo videos for some reason… so I wanted to put it in there.

And one of the resulting bullet time sequences:

Bullet Time Rig Made With a Ceiling Fan

Here is a closer look at the rig. Since the background and light is stationary relative to the camera – the light and position stays constant while the middle object rotates.

Bullet Time Rig Made With a Ceiling Fan

[EPIC Matrix effect w/ a ceiling fan & 1 GoPro (ghetto bullet time) | Mark Rober via Gizmodo]

P.S. While other methods may not be as cheap as 30$ it is still possible to produce a budget tight bullet time scene provided you have enough photographer friends.

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Related posts:

Guitarist Brian May posts fan photo to Instagram, gets banned; bashes the fan Using the Chronos high speed camera with motion capture rig for bullet time effects DIY: How to make your own ‘Centriphone’ bullet-time rig How to make a cheap DIY bullet time rig with a lazy susan and some drawer slides

Filed Under: DIY Tagged With: Video

About Udi Tirosh

Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

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