Melbourne-based Splice Boys – Richard Kendall and Tom Brandon – are the creative and technological brains behind the Time Booth. Over the last 10-12 years, the pair have expanded the capabilities and uses of multi-camera array capture, through their software and hardware developments. In the latter half of the 2010s, they took their advanced processes to China, the Gulf and New York. Just as they were hitting their stride, COVID drove the pair and their equipment back to Melbourne and into multiple lockdowns. With the parting of the pandemic clouds, the Splice Boys have rebooted their unique technology to bring to the public an immersive experience of their filmic-magic.
Many know the multi-camera array process as bullet-time photography, first popularised in The Matrix (1999). The memorable sequence went on to win special effects Academy and BAFTA awards. With its prescient predictions of what was to come, the film is now a cultural touchstone. The effect’s name refers to the bullet-ducking scene, shot high on a tower roof overlooking central Sydney. In it, Neo, the lead character, impossibly weaves under a speeding bullet bearing down on him in slow motion. Simultaneously, the camera’s eye sweeps and wraps around the unfolding scene. The simultaneous sequence combines to warp perceptions of time, before dropping the viewer back into normal, raw reality. By demonstrating his mastery over time and space, the sequence imparts Neo with superhuman qualities.
The term "array" simply describes any number of strung-together items. The phrase multi-camera array then refers to multiple SLR still cameras strung along the tracks of a purpose-built rig. A Time Booth array can number between 24 to 170 cameras. The Splice Boys adapt their Booths to fit specific sites, generally to form a circular or ovoid bowl. Rigs can also follow constrained lines of action or twist around a pre-determined path of movement; it depends on the site and the requirements.
Cameras on the rig, connect wirelessly to a central control point and fire off as subjects move or pass through an activated space. For different effects, the cameras can fire either in rapid succession or simultaneously. Live video captured on SLRs at either end of the array, also can provide real-time action, leading into and away from bullet time. The shooting sequence results in multiple high-resolution still images. Hardware and software within the Booth readily stitch the components into seamless and easily branded animated videos. From the Booth's kiosk point, participants get to download, email and post their personally generated content. The software allows partners to apply branding to the videos, which they can use for posting on their own platforms, and for local area broadcasting.
Videos are between 5 and 25 seconds. The more cameras on the array, the longer the primary video, which can further loop and reverse for longer periods.
With studio lighting and pre-designed backgrounds (built or using green screens), the rig encloses a multidimensional studio. No “fourth walls” to break here.
Prior to The Matrix, many precursors in film and video were experimenting with warping perceptions of space and time. They were drawing on traditions in visual technology dating back to Eadweard Muybridge's nineteenth-century photographic explorations of time and motion.
The team leader for The Matrix’s bullet-time scene, John Gaeta, acknowledges the conceptual influence of the revolutionary adult Japanese anime film Akira (1988). Set in the now past, dystopian future of 2019, Akira featured animated sequences of bullet time concepts. Gaeta also acknowledges the view-morphing techniques of French music video director and filmmaker Michel Gondry, (also an Academy and BAFTA award recipient). In the '90s, Gondrey produced trippy music videos featuring mash-ups of time and space (Like a Rolling Stone, a 1995 remake for the Rolling Stones). His 1996 ad for Smirnoff featured two scenes of speeding bullets, rendered in a (yet to be named) bullet-time effect.
However, it was the Matrix sequence that changed forever how we conceptualise and visualise time and motion. On the film’s twentieth anniversary, David Edelstein of New York magazine’s Vulture section described its seminal significance. From that point on, “space and time could then be cleft in twain.” (i.e., split in two).
The essential elegance of The Matrix bullet-ducking scene stems from the use of real actors recorded by live capture. The Wachowski sisters, the film's producers, used neither stunt doubles nor computer-generated effects to achieve the epoch-defining effect. CGI technology was still developing at the time. However, as it matured, Edelstein notes, filmmakers used it to “make the human body do anything at any speed”. He added that "they would do it so promiscuously that miracles came to seem cheap.”
Edelstein feels that the use of CGI in The Matrix’s sequels failed to realise the same visceral effects as the original live capture using live, multi-camera array photography. Writing in 2019, Edelstein said he felt that “great bullet-time shots rely not just on fancy computer work and editing but actors – not stuntpeople – executing jaw-dropping ... moves in long, single takes.” Edelstein concluded, “So much of bullet time [feels] tangibly real.”
Interestingly, the popular name for the multi-camera array process – bullet-time photography – was originally registered as a trademark by Warner Brothers, The Matrix’s distributor. The approach found an early home in the shoot-‘em-up/ noir video game series, Max Payne (from 2001). The name and the process’ protected status suggest early ambitions for the technology in action films and video games. However, The Matrix had visually split time and space with exquisite ease. Dodging a bullet was just the beginning.
The rise of the technology reflects a rare perceptual shift in the culture’s capabilities. The visual outputs produced by the multi-camera array process beautifully manifest our ever-expanding capacity to hold multiple perspectives and parallel meanings.
The process reveals enigmatic worlds previously concealed within literal two and three-dimensional renderings. It seamlessly melds together hitherto distinct inner and outer realms. Concentrated decisive moments allow for the visual expansion of ideas related to motive, intent, purpose, feeling, experience, skill, action, and thought.
Twenty-plus years after The Matrix and bending time and space to explode concentrated moments is a standard component of visual storytelling. Multi-camera array photography is not the only way to realise this effect in films and videos. Still, it is a gold standard for depicting human experience, response and reactions found within the discontinuities of time and space.
In the last decade, multi-camera array processes have been evident in movies as disparate as Zoolander 2, Justice League, and more recently in French Dispatch. It beautifully visualised the elusive cerebral dimensions of Sherlock Holmes; in both the movie (Robert Downey Jn – Jude Law) and television versions (Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. It expressed the athleticism of women in ads made for the AFLW. It provided high value-added content using valuable talent for Nike. For an extended period, Nike converted a retail space into a multidimensional studio allowing extended public engagement and the creation of personalised branded collateral.
The technology’s use in public and sponsored spaces continues to expand as options grow for rapid distribution of branded outcomes. Options range from large screen broadcasts to personalised social media content.
More information
Contact Robert McGrath
info@itsoutnow.co
+61 41352 5588