Yeah, we confess we're nerds and watched all that behind-the-scenes stuff on the Matrix DVD -- when it's the only DVD you own, you gotta get your money's worth. If you'll recall (don't try and deny it), the much-lauded "bullet time" effect was accomplished by surrounding the leather-bedecked Keanu with dozens of digital still cameras to capture every millisecond of his limbo moves from every angle. Commercials aplenty soon co-opted the technology to push their wares, but Toshiba is flipping that formula here, hiring an ad agency with its very own bullet time variant called "timesculpture" to plug Toshiba's XDE technology. A circular rig with 200
Gigashot HD camcorders and 20,000 gigabytes of data later, they created this little number, which mixes full motion video, Matrix camera moves and a healthy dash of hipsterism. Check it out after the break.
posted Nov 11th 2008 10:18PM
Holy cwap that's so cool!
Cool but kinda made me a little dizzy.
tré cool .. but the irony is that we only get to watch this downscaled shitty version ..
@hazard
It's kind of like those emails I get from computer companies advertising a "crisp, clear HD screen" and then a photo below to show it off. If it looks good on my screen, I guess there's no need to upgrade.
It is very cool, but don't be fooled into thinking that it has anything to do with the quality of their XDE engine. If you are then the advertisers have won!
Sorry Engadget, there is no such thing as a 'healthy dash' of hipsterism. Just like there is no such thing as a 'healthy dash' of AIDS.
Canadian band, not Feist, Crystal Castles...
@ athousandleaves:
Fiest do video clips like this, http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Z-DIAthbM
This is a huge comment hijack, but:
Crystal Castles FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!
huge waste of time, that was...
extremely lame person, you are...
So, Saad Rabia, I am a extremely lame person because I comment that I think a piece of commercial art is not an interesting nor successful piece... by a guy who makes a sanctimonious blog criticizing other peoples work. Wow, that was a succinct piece of hypocrisy on your part. Well played, Sir.
I reckon what you need is a wordy, 'thoughtful' critique.
I'll be brief.
The piece looked like a working rehearsal of the process. For my withered, old sensibilities it was a visually un-interesting piece. There was no content, just a 'proof' of a CG/ live action effect idea. As for the technology, it looked like a fine compositing job done with a set of video loops. It really didn't excite the little lame creative visual artist in me who has been working as a creative professional for the last 31 years, just didn't impress me.
So, extremely lame I be, thanks for pointing that out.
Bayard, couldn't you say all of that on your first comment instead?
I wasn't judging you as much as showing you how really useless your first comment was. Your comment was nothing but a working rehearsal of the process. For my withered, old sensibilities it sounded like un-interesting talk. There was no content, just a 'proof' of a Trolling/ not cool action or idea.
But thank you anyways.
If it amazed even one person, it was worth it.
And it was.
That's actually really cool. Pretty neat stuff.
Song is Air War by Crystal Castles.
Here's the CBC streaming player http://radio3.cbc.ca/play/band/Crystal-Castles/Air-War/
Lol, you and I posted about the same time Mike. It's actually a remix, and you can download the original for free from http://music.download.com/crystalcastles/3600-8362_32-101111983.html .
Yea i thought that was awesome as well, but even more awesome was the making of.
I'm a sucker for the numbers.
10 Actors
200 cameras
2.5 mill renamed frames out of 20 terabytes of film
all edited down to a 1 minute film
Wow. Isn't advertising fun
Wow. Guess it was just me. But I found the music so annoying that I muted it the second time I watched the video.
(Did like the arcade game Crystal Castles, though.)
There's nothing after the break... I feel lied to and betrayed...
Whoops, I guess there must have been a page error or something, I found it.
Pretty cool, but I don't see how it makes me want to buy a new computer.
XDE technology runs on their TVs and DVD players, too. It's not all about buying their computers.
i didnt find anything after the break either. damn engadget
and i hate following links....
...
...
who knows what creepiness lies in the world of internet outside of engadget's kingdom.
Perhaps this so called "life". I wonder if life offers a matte display? Nevermind, I won't bother.
There is no break at all. There is a link to an external page, but that isn't a break.
@Othello
Yeah, that's what I thought too... I clicked the read too and didn't see it either. Went in to IE instead of FF and I found it on the Read link...
Your current computer choked on their video first time around, and it doesn't make you want to buy a new one?
"Commercials aplenty soon co-opted the technology to push their wares"
Actually, it's the other way around. Commercials were using this for quite a while before The Matrix.
I had to re-watch that 2 times to understand how INSANE that is!!!!
for people looking for a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYPn1BrTNCE&feature=related
Paul, I hope The Matrix isn't the ONLY DVD you own! :)
the matrix box set are the only dvds i own... after this article i feel like a walking cliché... thanks engadget...
That was so E-P-I-C I had to spell it out.
ok, where did they hide the cameras???
i dont see any!
yeah i wanna know the same too, its impressive
most likely they paint out the cameras in a program like after effects or some other compositing software. This project is made to look simple, but it takes lots of man hours. If i was going to paint out the cameras, the easiest way would be to take a picture from all 200 cameras with an empty set (no actors) and make a clean plate. Then for every frame a camera is visible, just use a masked layer to bring in the clean plate. Once you have this little system set up. the removal of the cameras is simple (still very time consuming)
I know, totally! I couldn't see any cameras in The Matrix either! WTF?!
Actually, it is quite impressive; what they did, that is. For every frame of every person/object/scene, they recorded it with one camera using the smallest increments in a circle, the camera was attached to the ceiling and had a motor to spin it fast, it captures quite a lot of frames per second, then using automation they cut out the people/objects in the scenes and merged them, finally using back-breaking animation they animated them to make a sweet effect. A hell of a comercial..
They explain a bit of how they did it in this 'Making of.." video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swKAfsyoCmI
@greg
Nope. 200 cameras used. To "brush" out the cameras, they cut the circular rig in half, and filmed the blank canvas room without the rig 360.....genius, really.
I can't believe this ad wasn't done by Gondry.
Disturbing, but it opens new avenues of artistic impression....through PORN.
money shot in bullet time... so wrong...
...but worth seeing...once...
*seeding*
.. exactly ..
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who's first DVD and original reason for buying a player was the Matrix movie. Hehehe. In fact I actually had the DVD in hand before the player due to pre-ordering the DVD and indecisiveness on my part of which player I wanted. Ended up with a 2nd gen 2-disc Toshiba. And yes, I probably watched that movie and all it's content throughly.
MAN!! I am a geek.
The Matrix DVD was the reason my father upgraded his sound system to surround sound. The lobby scene...*drool*.
Anyone else know of any really cool surround sound sequences in films?
Very cool, but as expected the tie-in is pretty weak. Shouldn't we constantly redefine how we watch things... because a bunch of people are prancing in a room? Why, yes!
I so want the remix of Airwar (by Crystal Castles) they used in that commercial. For anyone interested in the original, check out http://music.download.com/crystalcastles/3600-8362_32-101111983.html
Crystal Castles FTW.
More appropriate meme: "Crystal Castles are massive fail."
They take other chiptune artists songs, lay some very basic preset 8bit synth parts over it, and try to pass them off as their own.
They have been caught on many occasion and always try to weasel out of it.
http://gameboygenius.8bitcollective.com/wordpress/2008/05/06/crystal-castles-and-chip-music-copyright-infringements/
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/05/05/chiptune-music-theft-continues-crystal-castles-abuses-creative-commons-license/
http://www.pileup.com/babyart/blog/?p=130
eric, if you read their side, the record label put it on their myspace. the band never did it, and neither was it 'released', it was put on the record labels myspace for fuck sake. QQ.
and who cares anyway, just listen to the music and enjoy. off stage antics are not going to influence what music I enjoy.
"Vareint"? Really, man? Come on.
Well, yes. They vareed it quite a bit from the original effect.
Anyone else find it odd that a company that's touting their great upscaling technology still felt the need to shoot their commercial for their upscaling technology, in actual 1080 HD, rather than standard definition and then upscaling it?
Hmmm.
No one is asserting that their upscaled SD is anywhere comparable to true HD footage.
remind anyone of the 'street spirit' video radiohead made 13 years ago???
Props to you for seeing that as well, but it's a completely different version of the same idea.
Before the 360 shot, we had double exposure. We could slow one frame rate and speed another.
This commercial is the same thing, but with 200 cameras instead of one, and apparently 20TB of storage. Wowsers.
Martin Arnold would be proud.
Put a dark lens over your left eye and you can watch it in 3D.
(Pulfrich Effect)
Wow! That actually kinda worked
as i need most peaceful life along with this world within our capacity we should all
be happy among future carrier of life.
*head explodes*
Looks like a modern interpretation of Salvador Dali and Philippe Halsman's surreal motion photography... Nice!
Nice one, but does it really promotes Toshiba's computers? not sure.
my comments at http://www.commentino.com/orim
Actually, they used an array of film SLRs to film the bullet time sequences.
This should be evident from the behind-the-scenes video, but also from the state of technology at the time.
The Matrix was released on March 31, 1999. This was after the advent of the first DSLR (Kodak DCS100, 1991, http://www.nikonweb.com/dcs100/ ) but before the introduction of the first powerful, mainstream DSLR (Nikon D1, June 15 1999, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_D1 ). No digital camera available before 1999 would have had sufficient resolution for the task---but 35mm film, well... it sure _sounds_ like a film they use in the movie industry... oh wait... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35mm_film
(He doesn't wear leather...)
Now that is awesome.
Anyone find a the-making-of that commercial ?
bah, gondry did it first, and did it better. no, not that gondry, his brother, oliver 'twist' gondry:
http://www.partizan.us/musicvideos/og/tiga.html
youtube for the quicktime impared:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VySphrQsy1U
Yes, the brother of the brother of the gondry you were thinking of (er... well michel gondry, actually) did it first:
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=3SdlAXq45VY
and he did it ... twice:
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=mh9QaX_KRZ0
So please, can anyone stop referencing this effect as the "Matrix bullet time effect" ?
Even Gondry is not the first one to use this effect, since it comes from a french artist (I can't remember his name, though) who shot himself this way while receiving loads of water upon the head...
And please, beside the huge tech performance, there is absolutely no fresh idea in this commercial.
Like Photon209 said, the artist from poland Zbig Rybczynski even received an academy award in '83 for his short movie "Tango"which has certainly been extremely inspiring.
Why do publicist never assume the source of their idea ?
They really are empty minded.
the artist I was refering to is emmanule Carlier (http://www.biennale-de-lyon.org/bac1995/eng/carlier.htm) who formerly used this kind of shooting technique for the art biennale of Lyon in 1995.
Really cool ad.If you like this you will like the opening credits of the new james bond movie.
Crystal Castles are amazing, they are massive in Ireland and the UK.
Seemed a bit old school to me; ad said little about the product, other than a bit of "cool" branding. Seems like the whole thing was commissioned back to front to me: "hey, we can do this cool thing with cameras and computers; let's shoehorn it into our pitch for the Toshiba XDE account", with a contrived bit of voice-over at the end. I think the days of these kind of ads are over/numbered; we've pretty much seen all that clever digital production can offer and it's not that impressive anymore. Maybe we'll return to a 50's style "buy these, they're great" style of ads.
in the famous Matrix bullet time scene there is a major bug:
Neo drops the gun to the floor, but when the camera goes around the guns disappear. as he falls to the floor, the guns appear again :)
Another CSS song in a commercial.
No, that would be Crystal Castles :)
Did you see the gorilla walk through the middle?
Those two fools throwing paint on everyone else deserve to be punched in the mouth. Nobody throws pain in this house.
Anyone know who did the ending voice over for that commercial?
Definitely appreciate the work that went into it, but I probably won't be able to watch it many times and still find it fascinating, as with the bravia commercials.
Can you imagine the mess they made after shooting the ad? I mean, that paint spilling and those... black rectangles? I don't envy their janitor.
Meh.
Maybe it's still just early, but I can't help but feel terribly UNimpressed by that. It just strikes me as incredibly corny for some reason. I think it might be the "it looked cool in the Matrix the first time around but not so much any more regardless of how much you spend on it" type of effect. I'm sure there must've been a better way to phrase that.
Now, throw in some Fallout 3 VATS, some exploding limbs, and maybe I'll enjoy it. Yeah, that's what it needs--violence.
Looks like a combination of Zbigniew Rybczynski's "Tango" and bullet time. I suspect the bouncing balls are a reference to "Tango", actually.
Cool!
Neo does not wear a leather jacket in any of the Matrix films.
It's actually reminiscent of a Salvidor Dali piece:
http://viceroyforlife.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/5-salvador-dali21.jpg
What an awesome commercial. I am trying to imagine how they actually created this without editing out the other cameras in the other angles, then again, I know very little about cameras or filming. Anyone know of a link that explains the technology of this a little better?
Cool effect, but I still hate hipsters.
I'll admit the technology is pretty cool. Now would it kill them to actually film something interesting? Oooh! Look at that man throwing a bucket of paint! Look at that man swinging a flag! How original!
That was annoying and pointless. Is it 1999 again?
Cool. Too bad their TVs are garbage.
I'm surprised no one mentioned the GAP ad that preceded The Matrix and featured (really, as I understand it, pioneered) live-action bullet time. Here's the ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knW1hGwmEXQ
I'm surprised nobody's brought up the video for Roni Size's "Brown Paper Bag" yet, which seems to have been an inspiration for the back-and-forth scrubbing effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4n0iUtWEwY
I just watched the Roni size promopeople are referring to, and although nice, it is nowhere near as intricate as this. Making a video loop with footage shot from a single fixed camera is child's play, and compositing another element into the scene is reasonably straightforward too. Doing it with footage shot on 200 consumer cameras however is a completely different story. I heard that they had to custom-make the rig, the circuitry to trigger the cameras, and even write bespoke computer scripts to pull the relevant frames from the inconceivably massive 20TB of data. Now that is serious commitment to art.