Production
The American release of the film had the actors dubbed with American accents. In the film scenes were shot with the characters handling American money both to not give away that the film was South African, despite it being a sequel to a popular South African film.
The bullet-time scene occurs at the end, when Marduk has died and his chief guard is about to kill Dr. Kane while Steve is climbing up the outside of the building they're in. The guard fires his gun (at 1:36:10) and the bullet comes out very slowly and moves across the screen in a recognizable (but low-budget) early version of the famous scene in the Matrix. After ten seconds of the bullet flying across the room, Steve Chase has gotten up the building, gets inside the room, and deflects the bullet with a metal ashtray.
This very low-budget "Bullet-Time-Slice" sequence was achieved very simply, in-camera, with no post-production effects. The first shot of the bullet exiting the barrel of the gun was shot in close-up, with the barrel removed from the frame of the gun locked-off pointing downwards but with the camera also turned on its side, framing the barrel horizontally, but pointing down toward the floor. (When viewed 'upright,' this would then appear to be pointing at the subject in a correct manner.) A bullet, smaller in diameter than the inside of the barrel, was then dropped down through the barrel along with a puff of smoke from a cigarette. The bullet-and-smoke shot was filmed at 120fps to create the desired effect. To achieve the "Matrix"-style shot that followed, a close-up of the bullet rotating in front of the lens with the camera moving along with the bullet and the victim visible ahead was executed as follows. According to Tai Krige, S.A.S.C, the film's cinematographer:
"A large circular piece of clear Plexiglass was rigged to the camera dolly directly in front of the camera lens with a bullet fixed to the middle of the circular sheet of Plexi. A small electric motor was used on the outer edge, out of frame to rotate the Plexi and of course the bullet. And by then simply dollying the camera with the entire rig down the room gave us the shot of what looked like the camera flying along directly behind the bullet travelling through the air toward the target....By carefully 'lighting out' the reflections on the Plexi,the shot was accomplished.
"Filming Low budget 'indie' type movies do have their advantages...One has to come up with ideas to try and make the shots work without the use of expensive post production effects....The opening credits sequence with the large orb of the sun behind the Hero going through his moves was simply shot in the studio with him shot in silhouette against a large silk scrim with a lit red sun (lots of red filters over the lamp) from behind the scrim and by lowering the lamp stand it looked like the sun dropping down behind him. The 'wavy' credits were all shot on stills film and projected on to a white silk cloth which was physically waved by hand with the type, or names then shot at 120fps appearing to magically wave around....Dissolves in and out, from one credit to the other edited in finished the effect."
Read more about this topic: Kill And Kill Again
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (16131680)
“By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.”
—Friedrich Engels (18201895)
“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”
—Karl Marx (18181883)