15 years ago I worked with a team of artists and filmmakers on a film that became the most visually influential movie since
Blade Runner. The effects work on the film was not created by ILM or Weta (juggernauts of modern film effects industry) but by a small team under the roof of Manex Entertainment. This company was formerly known as Mass Illusion and populated by former employees of the Trumbull company nestled high in the Berkshire mountains in Massachusetts. In Late 1997, Manex inc, an investment securities company looking to throw into the entertainment arena bought Mass Illusions and their assets and set up shop in the former Naval airbase in Alameda CA. During this period, Mass Illusions/ Manex were finishing up digital effects chores on the visually stunning film
What Dreams May Come (also set to win an Oscar for Visual Effects one year before the Matrix' win). One of the Manex' teams great innovations was the creation of the "Bullet-Time" rig: an array of Canon EOS film cameras remotely triggered to take exposures in sequence and bulk loaded with high speed motion picture film. The resultant images were striking and took filmmakers into new realms of what was possible with the new advancements of computer integration in filmmaking
.
Fast forward 15 years later and the fast "bullet-time"-like cameras moves are so ubiquitous they are hardly noticeable. Superheros thrillers, Giant Robot adventures, virtual reality fantasies and bizarre sci-fi landscapes are the wild westerns of the 21st century. Cameras zoom around characters and environments with effortless speed.
The Matrix was the harbinger for this brave new world of Cinema. For better or worse, It changed the look of movies forever.
