Blog 6: Opening Research
- luhoward
- May 4, 2023
- 3 min read
⬆️This is the opening of The Matrix, 1999.
The first time to see the bullet time effect in a movie shocked me. Trinity took off right from the floor and kicked the police. This sounds insane to be produced in 1999 when computer CG wasn't as easy to produce as it is now. Especially there were no mirrorless cameras in the 2000s that could shoot 4k 120p easily with a CF card.
The way how The Wachowskis manage to present this is interesting. They actually placed 120 Cannon EOS 5 film DSLRs and two Arris in a row, surrounding a green screen to achieve semicircular seamless filming. The shutter is then triggered one by one, passing down at a very high speed. Then the film tapes will be taken out and sewed into the main video.
The green screen will then be keyed. A pre-modelled map will then be placed in the background. Then computer CGs will enhance the texture of the clip. Finalising the whole clip of the special effect into a full shot.
⬇️ EOS 5 that shot the bullet time
Warner Bros produced The Matrix, and the Wachowskis wrote the script (They also did the directing jobs). Filming began in March 1998 and wrapped in August 1998; principal photography took 118 days.
Since The Matrix has its theme bound to green, the whole opening also looks gReEn. ➡️You can see the cool green colour grading of the opening throughout. The semiotics of green can be denotated with social links to computer codes as most fonts on the computers are green, and the movie itself is talking about living in a hyperreal world that a computer simulates.
⬇️Computer code
Talking about character presentation, Trinity is wearing an entirely black leather outfit. This kind of shirt is often expected to be worn by motor guys since it's cool and futuristic. The black also represents death as Trinity brings casualties within seconds.
The agent is wearing tight suits, which always represent order and solemn. This also ties in with Smith's role in the movie: a program that kills the anomalies in the matrix. (Sorry for the extremely low-quality photos. I took them out from youtube, and Smith took only a small proportion of the screen). He also wears sunglass, even in a dark room💀💀💀. Again that shows agent smith is cool, mysterious and dangerous.
All the codes help establish character opposition and show who the villain and heroine are in this story.
The next opening of the film I want to discuss is the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The opening is so literary ridiculous that I even thought 2001 A Space Odyssey is all about a bunch of monkeys smashing bone.💀💀💀 It's basic 10 minutes of 'Animal World' that shows how we humans evolve.
The opening is highly implicit that Stanley Kubrick uses apes to represent the early human, and bones represent the tools we discovered to help us evolve.
This stele acts as an enigma throughout the film. This might represent some Alien technology left behind. This gives the audience curiosity.
I cannot fully understand the semiotics in this opening yet as it's too implicit, and, except for the stone, there are no links between the later plots with the apes.
Anyways, I do certainly enjoy the top special visual effect produced by The Matrix, although I won't expect myself to produce any scene to the same standard. I might wanna try shooting more clips at higher-than-normal frame rates, as it does some amazing effects. How 2001: A Space Odyssey opens a film is also a great example of challenging tradition. Creating some thing out of regard is also what I should learn as a media creator.
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