Q U E S T I O N : What is the technology that
allows one element of a live-action scene to be
frozen, the camera’s perspective rotated, and
then the action continued?


A N S W E R : This eye-catching camera trickery has shown up in lots
of commercials lately, including the Gap’s “Khakis Swing” ad. For those
of you who haven’t seen the camera effect, it appears that time has
stopped, the video camera pans to a different spot, and then time
resumes.
Known as virtual camera movement, these shots are the creation of
cinematographer Dayton Taylor. In 1994 he submitted a patent for a
system that could produce time-independent camera motion. His
company, Digital Air, built a production service called Timetrack that
brings Taylor’s idea to life.
A Timetrack camera is actually made up of as many as 80 still cameras
set in a straight line or an arc. The entire array is controlled with a single
shutter and shares a common strip of film. Thus each Timetrack snapshot
produces images of the subject from many different perspectives at once.
If this film is then run together like a motion picture, the virtual camera
appears to move around an image that is stopped in time.