Matrix-Style Bullet Effect Captured With 50 Nokia Smartphones

Photography Tips  •  Smartphone Photography

If you have ever watched The Matrix, you probably remember a camera technique called the “bullet effect” that is responsible for all those awesome slow motion shots where the scene seems to just pop off of the screen. When filmmaker Paul Trillo joined forces with Microsoft, the team set out on a mission to create similar style clips while on location in New York City, using nothing but smartphones. Take a look at the video below to see how well they fared:

With 100 percent mobility, the project is a first of its kind, given that it was shot exclusively with smartphones (via PetaPixel). Once set up on a pre-calculated arc, the team took the 50 phones—all Nokia Lumia 1020s—to the street, where the contraption was wheeled around using two moving dollies.

The entire system, including a wireless network connection, had to be powered by a generator, which was also wheeled around with the camera arc as shown in this behind-the-scenes video:

The cameras were all programmed to fire simultaneously and were controlled using a special app on a Microsoft Surface Tablet. At the end of the shoot, the team was left with about 30,000 photographs to work with.

In the final video, this skateboarder appears to hover in the air.

The sets of photos, comprised of 50 photos each, had to be meticulously processed, compiled, and stabilized to create the end result.