Bullet Time

The action nearly stops and the camera keeps travelling, so the audience gets to walk around a moment that lasted a fraction of a second. It turns an instant into a place.

It reads as a break in the rules of the scene. Time belongs to the camera rather than to the world, which is why it suits stories where a character has stepped outside ordinary limits.

The original method is a ring of still cameras around the subject, fired in sequence a few milliseconds apart. Playing those images back in order gives a camera move through a moment that never moved. The Matrix (1999) used rigs of over a hundred cameras this way.

The path is the shot. A straight track past the subject, an arc around the head, a full orbit: each one says something different, and the speed of the travel is the only speed left in the frame.

Frames between the camera positions are usually filled in afterwards, which is why the move looks smoother than the number of cameras should allow.

Use it once, on the moment the story has been building to. It is expensive attention and it does not survive repetition.

Skip it when the action is already slow. Bullet time needs something fast to freeze, or there is nothing for the stillness to contrast against.

Slow motion slows the action and leaves the camera behaving normally. Bullet time nearly stops the action and gives all the remaining movement to the camera. If the camera is still, it is slow motion.

A freeze frame stops everything, including the camera. Bullet time stops everything except the camera. That one difference is the whole technique.

The Matrix (1999) is the reference, and the rooftop dodge is the shot everyone means by the name. Neo bends backward, the bullets hang in the air, and the camera sweeps around him through a moment that has stopped.

The camera freezes along with the subject and you get a still image. Say the camera keeps moving at full speed through the frozen moment, and name the path it takes.

The other failure is ordinary slow motion. Ask for the action to be almost stopped rather than slowed, so the contrast with the moving camera is obvious.