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Part 1:
From Manchester U to the Academy Awards
Part 2:
Enter the Matrix
Part 3:
IRIDAS Joins the Team
Part 4:
Raising the Bar
in VFX
Part 5:
SpeedGrade is Born
Part 6:
Kim Libreri's Filmography
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Enter the Matrix
Around the
time when What Dreams May Come
was being made, a VFX supervisor named John
Gaeta was talking to the little known writer-director team of Andy and
Larry Wachowski. “John stuck his neck out and committed to delivering
ambitious visual effects,” relates Kim. “What they wanted had never been
done on film. We had to figure out how to actually realize this vision
of comic book action in a live action film while maintaining a real
esthetic quality to the shots. Artistry and technology had to be
invented hand-in-hand. It's the combination of these two elements that I
enjoy most about this work.”
Today
The Matrix
is rightly seen as a watershed in the history of Visual Effects, but,
before it could become that, significant technical problems had to be
solved. The most challenging of these was the problem of creating ‘hyper-slow motion’ shots while allowing the camera to move around a subject.
It was up to Kim and his team to find a way to make it work. This was
the birth of “bullet time,” and Kim officially became Bullet Time
Supervisor for the film. “At first John wanted to use a battery of movie
cameras for these shots, but, among other things, the cost would have
been prohibitive. The solution we found was much simpler.” As is now
well known, it involved placing a circle of still cameras around the
subject. These could then be shot simultaneously or in quick succession
allowing for a final shot where the camera appears to move freely in and
out and around the subject in hyper-slow motion. As everyone who has
seen the dramatic opening of
The Matrixcan attest, the effect is startling and
contributes greatly to the otherworldly quality of the film and the
world it presents.
In the battle on the rooftop, Neo dodges Agent
Smith's bullets in hyper-slow motion.
The virtual
environment technology used to create the animated backgrounds for the
Bullet Time sequences won a Technical Achievement award at the 2000
Academy Scientific and Technical Achievement Awards for Kim and his
colleagues George Borshukov and Dan Piponi. |
The opening scene in The Matrix features the first
Bullet Time shot.
Click on image to see
complete version
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