What if we could linger inside a single moment a little longer? And what if this moment was not just something we watch, but a space we could move through? The bullet time technique asks the first question. Volumetric capture is all about the second. These are very technical tools, yet they can also become parts of your film’s narrative grammar. How? We’ll learn from examples in modern movies and series that seem to have answered the questions above. Cinema has always been obsessed with time. Stretching it, compressing it, jumping through it, and almost freezing it. In previous articles, we examined some of the fundamentals in this context. (Head over here to understand the basics of experimenting with your frame rate. And over here, you will find a deep dive into super slow motion used for storytelling purposes.) Now let’s take it a step further by introducing bullet time and volumetric capture into the mix. Bullet time and volumetric capture are not the same Bullet time and volumetric capture are two cinema techniques that are often confused, and for good reason. Both rely on arrays of multiple cameras. Both allow motion within a shot that would be impossible to achieve with a single lens. However, their approach to reality is fundamentally different. Bullet time creates the impression that time is frozen or dramatically slowed, while the camera moves freely around the action. Volumetric capture, on the other hand, records the scene (the performance, mostly) as a three-dimensional time-based volume....
Published By: CineD - 7 days ago