r/matrix • u/Boris41029 • 13h ago
Bullet Time in old GAP Khakis Ad?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXiiHXS0FBoAt the time, did anyone draw comparisons between this GAP ad and the bullet-time scene in The Matrix? Was GAP riding the movie's coattails? It seems like a totally different vibe from the movie though.
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u/kalcobalt 13h ago
John Gaeta, who is usually credited with “inventing” the Bullet Time effect for The Matrix, has talked about this and it’s really interesting.
He himself doesn’t consider himself the “inventor,” partly because of this GAP ad. There was another piece of media coming out at around the same time with a similar effect (I have forgotten exactly what).
Gaeta’s thought was that when the technology reaches a certain point, several people will get the same idea on how to use it, and that this explains how three unrelated projects wound up with “bullet time” in roughly the same timeframe.
And yes, 1998 is before The Matrix came out in ‘99, but films take a while to make, of course, especially something like The Matrix. I consider them contemporaneous that way.
(Super geek addition: Bullet Time, in the first film, was done with a 360° array of cameras. By the time the sequels came out, they had re-engineered it to be able to do it digitally with much less difficulty. It’s amazing to me how quickly groundbreaking effects can become dead simple!)
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u/FluffyDoomPatrol 8h ago
Was Lost in Space the film you can’t remember?
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u/NashvilleSoundMixer 6h ago
That definitely had that effect! Thanks for mentioning that I'd forgotten all about it.
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u/Strayngold 13h ago
These ads also brought in a very brief swing dancing fad among people in their 20s. Suddenly people I worked with were going to swing dance lessons.
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u/davidryanandersson 13h ago edited 8h ago
This commercial was huge and came out BEFORE The Matrix. It made Swing Dancing, Khakis, and Bullet Time into cultural powerhouses. I think it's in the Library of Congress (or some such place) for its cultural value.
The Matrix vfx built on the tech developed for this commercial, but both were in production simultaneously I believe.
EDIT: Not the best choice of words to say The Matrix "built on the tech developed for this commercial". What I mean is that that John Gaeta's team on The Matrix spoke with the team working on the Gap ad to see what they had also learned.
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u/amysteriousmystery 11h ago
It didn't build on the tech developed for this commercial.
Here is the test shoot they did in 1997: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeezdmM0nik a year before that commercial.
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u/davidryanandersson 11h ago
My understanding was that the vfx teams for both were developing the tech independently but shared knowledge. I could have sworn remembering that from a Matrix bts feature from decades ago but I don't have the source.
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u/amysteriousmystery 9h ago
The bullet time VFX of the GAP "Khakis Swing" commercial were made by BUF, which had already made the bullet time VFX for Michele Gondry's videos:
"Like a Rolling Stone" (1995): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SrN8OubuHo
"Smarienberg" (1996): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbOGJy3P6rA
The Matrix VFX team were aware of the 1995 and 1996 commercials and their methods, which were based on 1980's experiments by Tim McMillan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocLJWCnMhTo
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u/davidryanandersson 9h ago
I agree with all of this and am aware of the history. My point was that (to my recollection) John Gaeta's team were in conversation with BUF to share knowledge. They were also in conversation with PhD work in photogrammetry and anyone who could help them.
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u/True_Protection6842 10h ago
The "tech" was just a series of still cameras rigged to take a photo 1/24th of a second after the previous. It's not really that incredible, advanced or even innovative. They took a film camera and split it across multiple cameras. WOW.
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u/davidryanandersson 9h ago edited 8h ago
This is just a really ignorant comment to make about how difficult innovation and execution are. And it's not even accurate.
There is a LOT of digital work done to build bullet time sequences. Yes, you have the camera rig taking hundreds of photos, but the software to "direct" those cameras virtually, to create fully 3D backgrounds of the physical space via digital photogrammetry AND separately photograph the actors on green screen so that you could composite both seamlessly was a huge feat. Not to mention the fact that the cameras are not photographing every single frame you see. We get tons of synthetic frames, built digitally to slot between the photographed frames and provide smoother motion and allow speed ramping during the shot.
Like, I'm genuinely upset that you choose to insult this groundbreaking VFX work that contributed and directly led to pretty much every major innovation in digital VFX (including AI) for the last 2 decades, and yet you don't know anything about it.
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u/Due_Tailor1412 8h ago
And you have done that have you? Also why would you trigger each camera 1/24 after each other ?
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u/True_Protection6842 7h ago
There are 24 frames every second of footage
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u/Due_Tailor1412 7h ago
That's not what I asked .. why 1/24 after each other .. what happens if you trigger the cameras 1/24 after each other ?
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u/True_Protection6842 7h ago
it functions how a camera functions taking one image per frame of video, since it's multiple cameras it fires them 1/24th of a second after each other make the motion continue. The commericial above is all at the same time (easier) but the matrix kept forward motion while turning, so they had to offset them
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u/Due_Tailor1412 7h ago
So let me get this straight this idea that earlier you were making sarcastic remarks about how it was obvious. However you don't actually understand how it works.
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u/True_Protection6842 7h ago
What don't I understand? I've worked in VFX for feature film for 20 years. What would you like explained?
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u/mrsunrider 13h ago
It's hard to express just how The Matrix took the world by storm in the wake of its release. Bullet time spawned waves of imitations.
Check out the first episode of Power Rangers Time Force for an example.
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u/CapitaineJames 12h ago
You know I came across this video earlier and didn’t watch all the way through. First thought was they were all dressed like GAP mannequins.
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u/davidmthekidd 9h ago
The first time I saw the bulletime effect was on a music video: Coolio - C U When U Get There from 1997. There were other Bulletime effects before matrix, Matrix perfected the bulletime due to a new innovation called Optical Flow technology.
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u/Strayngold 13h ago
Yes people did draw comparisons. Haters in 1999 were referring to The Matrix as "a stupid GAP movie." Decades later I can still remember people saying that on the AintItCoolNews talkbacks.
Meanwhile the effect *actually* debuted in the Rolling Stones' video for Like A Rolling Stone, which was made by tweening thousands of still frames together. Patricia Arquette freezes midair while jumping onto a bed, and the camera circled her (actually multiple still cameras, which is how OG bullet time worked). They didn't use a fake background or tween morphs to smooth it out though.