Brooke, thanks for these illuminating comments! It's like having
opened a pandora's box of technical wizardry!
Henry
> "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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