Levitation
- Wire work
- Wire removal
A figure hangs in the air with nothing holding them.
Opens a video model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.
What it is for
A figure hangs in the air with nothing under them. Gravity has been taken off one person while the rest of the room keeps it.
The frame has to prove it. A levitation is an argument with the audience, and the evidence is the gap between the feet and the floor.
How it works
Show the ground, and show the distance to it. A shot that crops below the knees gives the audience no way to tell the difference between floating and standing, as the note says.
Wires do the work on a set, rigged to a harness and painted out afterwards. The reason wire work reads as flight rather than hanging is that the performer controls their own body against the pull, so the shoulders stay level and the limbs are active.
Clothing is the other tell. Fabric hangs straight down under gravity even when the body does not, so a coat that sticks out sideways says the figure is being held rather than floating.
When to use it
Use it for the supernatural, for a martial arts world with its own physics, and for a dream where one rule has been suspended and the rest have not.
Skip it in a scene that otherwise obeys physics without comment. One floating figure in a realist room asks a question the scene then has to answer.
Told apart from its neighbours
A floating fall removes the ground entirely, so there is no horizon and no reference. Levitation keeps the ground in frame, because the ground is what makes the effect readable.
The test is whether you can see a floor. Floor visible below the feet is levitation. No floor and no horizon is a floating fall.
On film
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) runs its fights on wire work, with performers crossing rooftops and standing on bamboo, and the bodies stay active rather than hanging. The Matrix (1999) uses the same rigging to hold figures in the air mid fight.
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
- The Matrix (1999)
The prompt
Replace the blanks, keep the rest. Then run it on a video model.
<subject> levitating above the ground, nothing supporting them, clothing hanging naturally, ground clearly visible below
What goes wrong
The figure comes back standing, because the model crops the floor out. Say the ground is visible below them and name the distance, half a metre, a body length.
The second failure is a visible support or a pose that reads as hanging. Say nothing is holding them and that the clothing hangs straight down.
Leave out
visible support, ground contact
Watch for
Show the gap to the ground. Without it the figure just looks like they are standing.
Questions
Shoot it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
Next to it in floating and falling
