What is Bullet Time Effect in films, due to which everything stops in the air?

Whenever there is a comparison between Hollywood and Bollywood, you must have heard people saying one thing that Bollywood does not have the things that the makers have in Hollywood. There is a reason why Hollywood movies seem so different. For example, the film ‘Matrix’ released in 1999 showed people a world which they could not forget till date. The Matrix put an entire generation into contradiction that everything around us is a lie and there is a world where we are all sleeping.

This film introduced not only Hollywood but every film industry to many different aspects of film making. There were many such scenes in this film, shooting them in the same manner is still a challenge for many directors and cinematographers. One such scene was the iconic Bullet Dodge scene in Matrix.

In this scene, Keanu Reeves’ character dodges all the bullets by bending 180 degrees and the entire camera rotates around him in circular motion. This scene and its camera movement brought a different type of technique to the film making of that era, which is used in many films today as an iconic effect. So let us tell you why you find this scene of Matrix so unique and who are the actors in Hindi cinema who have done such scenes not once but twice.

What is bullet time effect?

Bullet Time Effect or Matrix Effect is a type of scene effect which is used in films. This effect is often used to stop time in a scene. If we understand this scene of Matrix closely, then time plays a very important part in the entire story of this film. In this scene, New’s character has been shown fast according to the speed of time. When there is firing on New, he dodges them with great speed but the entire scene is shown to us in very slow motion so that we can understand the entire scene well and can connect more with New’s character.

How is this effect created?

Creating this effect may seem easy with today’s technology, but in reality it is not so easy. To create this effect, about 200 to 300 cameras are placed in circular movement around an object. These cameras are set at an angle of 180 degrees or 360 degrees depending on how big the circle around the object is. After this, while shooting the scene, all those cameras simultaneously capture the action of the object circularly from different angles. All this happens in photos. After taking these pictures, you get a complete frame by frame moment of the motion of that object.

When Shahrukh flew like new in Matrix

When these photos are received, they are given motion during post production and all the glitches are removed and the cameras are also removed. After this, all the images are set together frame by frame in such a way that you feel that it is a video and not a picture. This effect started with the film Matrix, but this effect has been used many times in Bollywood also. For example, the iconic rickshaw rescue scene of Farah Khan’s directed film ‘Main Hoon Na’ or the scene of Shahrukh firing the gun flying in the air in the same film. Apart from this, there is a car fight scene of Shahrukh Khan and Arjun Rampal in Ra.One in which Kareena and her son are in the car and the car turns 360 degrees.

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