| Clockstoppers
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| The Special FX | ||
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| Jesse has to jump, and
we have to get him really far very fast, so we put him in whats
called a fly rig, explains Fink. Its a harness apparatus
operated by the special effects guys that allows an actor to jump
and be carried on a cable. We then surround him with still cameras
in a large semi-circle so that we can look at him from a range of
180 degrees. Its a really complicated array shot, adds Hurd, using over ninety cameras to create the effect. I think it will really astonish audiences. You get those sorts
of shots in commercials or music videos, but you cant normally
do that in the middle of a feature film because it just stops the
reality of the situation, adds visual effects producer Jacqui
Lopez. But the sci-fi premise of Clockstoppers
lends itself to a very stylized visual look. It was really exciting
to try to figure out what that would look like, and what wed
want to see by stopping time. Usually we can shoot someone against a blue screen, along with someone else on the set, and do it as a composite shot says Lopez. But in this instance, the invisible actors had to work with a third visible person in that Zak and his girlfriend had to actually manipulate Meeker into cool dance moves. We did this by having Meeker remain motionless while Zak was walking around normally, and to achieve the hypertime effect, we manipulated the speed of the film, normal to fast, starting at twenty-four frames per second and then speeding up to three hundred and sixty. It gets complicated, but the effect is pretty cool. Clockstoppers
was filmed in mid-winter, 2001, in Los Angeles and Orange County
locations that included Long Beach Airport, the city of Orange,
homes in Pasadena and Altadena, the Verizon Building in Westlake
Village and the Biltmore Hotel. The production also employed the
Boeing facility in Downey for various visual effects and to stage
the clean room set, which is the high-tech science lab
where the climax of the film takes place. Release Date: 11 Oct 2002 |
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