"Is there a technical/aesthetic term for the kind of camera - tracking
and/or panning - and on-screen movement in films which suddenly fast-
forwards at incredible speed, before returning to 'normal' motion?"
Hi there, Henry.
In answer to your question - sort of. If I understand, you are in want of a
general umbrella term, yes? The most appropriate would be 'motion vector'.
there are more specific terms but it does depend on whether you are talking
about creating this effect at aquisition or in post, ie, with a camera at the
time of filming or later in an editing facility with powerful computers. There
have been some useful (but slightly inaccurate) suggestions so far:
ramping - this is an aquisition effect and you use an intervalometer (basically
a dial connected to a set of cogs and a little motor attached to the camera)
to do it. Most camera dept's don't like saying that word and just call it a sync
box. The trick is to have an exposure change that is in sync with your frame
rate change - the ramping up or down - of your image, thus sync box.
In post-production the general term is motion effect but the specific dramatic
change of speed within the continuous flow of images is called a velocity
remap. As the popularity of this cinematic device has increased the software
manufacturer's like Avid have designed new tool palettes to deal with this
effect and they call them Timewarp and FluidMotion.
Of course as more clients want that look of Spiderman 27 or Lord of the
Potters, the terms have been conflated somewhat. Time ramping is common
parlance these days although technically it's a portmanteau term.
With camera technology being what it is today (with Viper, Red, Genesis, and
their ilk taking image resolution beyond anything we have ever seen) concepts
like speed rating, frame rate and exposure are becoming a thing of the past. If
you haven't seen it then it does sound very odd, I admit. Seriously though,
after you have filmed a scene you can decide after the fact what exposure,
speed and rate you would like the image to have and hey presto the physics
of light are transformed into a set of menu options. Personally, I think it's a
little sad.
There is limited call these days for aquisition effects as the bulk of image
manipulation (both temporal and spatial) is done in post. I wish Deleuze were
still around to reconsider the time-image/movement-image in the light of these
new technologies.
I hope this was helpful.
brooke
ps - I don't want to ruffle any feathers but in my experience 'step printing' is a
very specific effect that doesn't create slow motion of fast motion shots as
we conventionally conceive of them. It is a process wherein every third,
fourth, fifth or so (you pick a smaller number to increase the visibility of the
effect) frame is skipped over and the incumbent frame is doubled. The result is
that the movement appears "sharp and glassy" and the contrast seems
heightened. There is something perceptually unusual about the movement in
the image but it still appears naturalistic and real. The battle scenes in Saving
Private Ryan are all step prints. In this case, some might suggest that this
adds violence and urgency to the film's aesthetics.
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