SEQUENTIAL IMAGES: RESEARCH

In the twentieth century, people were starting to understand how to capture motion because of the invention of the camera.

    Eadweard Muybridge

Muybridge's name is associated with the photography of movement. He started working on this area in 1872 when he was asked to take a picture of a horse. People wanted to know when a horse was running if he ever touched the ground with all 4 legs.
So they describe the process: "Cameras were placed in a line in a long shed and in front of each was a special shutter triggered electro-magnetically by the horse or the wheels of a sulky as it made contact with wires stretched across the track.". The result was great and they had achieved the first-ever photographs of sequences of movement and the results were published in Muybridge's Attitudes of Animals in Motion (1881).

Eadweard Muybridge, The Galloping Horse Portfolio, 1887

I really enjoy these photographs of this horse running, they show the first steps of any type of animation or film. The technique they used to do this specific image is clever and interesting, and if I was at that time, I would probably do the same. The same technique was used in the film "The Matrix". They used various cameras to do a slow-motion effect of the main character dodging bullets.

In the regular Slow Motion shot the camera moves around the object. But in cinema, this effect is achieved through a set of cameras that will also be around the object but in quick succession. On the TV Tropes website, they still explain how this is done: "The pictures in the still cameras are then displayed consecutively and spliced into movie frames, creating the effect of a single camera moving around a scene either frozen in time or moving incredibly slowly. "It is what happens in the Matrix.

References:

Bellis, Mary (2019) Eadweard Mybridge [online] available from: Eadweard Muybridge, the Father of Motion Pictures (thoughtco.com) (accessed 26th october de 2020)

Britannica (s.d.) Eadweard Mybridge [online] available from: Eadweard Muybridge | British photographer | Britannica (accessed 26th october de 2020)

TV Tropes (s.d.) Bullet Time [online] available from: Bullet Time - TV Tropes (accessed 26th october de 2020)