# Time Freeze Special Effects **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 6, 2008, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-freeze-special-effects/452054 "2008-06-06T19:52:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-freeze-special-effects/452054/1 "2008-06-06T19:52:09Z")
First, I should make clear that I am _not_ referring to Matrix-effects, bullet time, whatever you want to call it, which, surprisingly enough, I do have a decent grasp on, and which is explained fairly clearly and extensively across the internet. What I mean are scenes where a character is walking through a scene with a lot of moving people, objects, and so on, and everything but the character freezes in time, as seen in Heroes, X-Men, etc. The part that really baffles me is the interaction with objects carried by people who are frozen. For instance, there’s a commercial here where a guy is walking through a restaurant when everything stops, and he takes a pen out of one frozen person’s pocket. It’s clearly a stop-time effect, and not just people standing really still (I feel confident that I can tell the difference). There’s another where someone walks through an office, and everyone stops, including one guy who is in the middle of dropping a stack of papers. The papers freeze in mid-air, and the active person pushes them back into a neat pile in frozen dude’s hands. I feel that the basic concept of how they do this should be fairly obvious to me, but I simply can’t get my mind around it. ---
**Author:** ![Mikemike2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikemike2/32/305_2.png) [@Mikemike2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikemike2)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-freeze-special-effects/452054/2 "2008-06-06T19:54:50Z")
I have wondered about those effects as well and look forward to someone coming by with a definitive answer. My guess would be that the moving person is composited onto the still scene and interaction with other objects would be computer animations. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-freeze-special-effects/452054/3 "2008-06-06T20:21:32Z")
[QUOTE=TellMeI’mNotCrazy] First, I should make clear that I am _not_ referring to Matrix-effects, bullet time, whatever you want to call it, which, surprisingly enough, I do have a decent grasp on, and which is explained fairly clearly and extensively across the internet. [/QUOTE] The time-freeze thing can be done with the same apparatus. Snag the same moment from a wide range of angles and you can appear to pan around with time frozen. Add a live actor (filmed by a camera that pans in the same way as the fake pan) with a matte, or digitally. Interaction between the actor and the frozen scene can be done using a cut to a close-up of just the pocket and the pen, on a mannequin, or again, can be painted in digitally. In fact, this effect did actually appear in the first Matrix movie - when Morpheus tells the construct to freeze in the crowded city scene. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-freeze-special-effects/452054/4 "2008-06-06T20:28:58Z")
I’m not sure if this is the effect you are asking about, but a few years ago there were some commercials where all action froze while the camera appeared to keep moving, showing the scene in 3D from a changing angle. One way this was done was with a lot of separate, still cameras placed in a line, all pointing to the same action center. They were fired simultaneously, then the still frames strung together to make a movie. This only works for a few seconds (unless you have thousands of cameras), but it is a wonderful and impressive effect due to the 3D elements. Nowdays there may be more sophisticated ways of doing a similar thing using CGI for all I know. ---
**Author:** ![Bootis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e8c25b/32.png) [@Bootis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootis)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-freeze-special-effects/452054/5 "2008-06-06T21:31:33Z")
Here is a tutorial that shows how to freeze time: [http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial.html?id=23](http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial.html?id=23) For those of you who actually want to see it step by step…This is a basic example, more complicated versions obviously take longer than 5 minutes or so! ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-freeze-special-effects/452054/6 "2008-06-06T21:55:51Z")
In some instances, it really is done by people standing still. One sequence in Hereos has Hiro Nakamura freeze time and the camera follows him among the frozen people, including a girl jumping rope caught in mid leap. The behind-the-scenes footage shows that this was done by having the girl sit up on a green screen pillar, with the jump rope held up over her head by wires.