Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
A fi lm that lasts one minute may tell a story that takes place over many years or even centuries. Sto-
rytellers can speed up time, slow down time, move forward and backward in time. The passage
of time is manipulated to allow the storyteller to move to the important story points and cut through
the less signifi cant events. A storyboard artist makes choices about how the story's time and reality
will be communicated to achieve the clearest and most effective telling of the story.
Visualizing Time and Movement
Another aspect of revealing the passage of time is the representation of movement. From
the earliest cave paintings to the most recent animated fi lm, artists have been trying to create
still images that embody an expression of movement. This is because most living things move
and embodying movement will bring the artist closer to embodying life. And all great art
embodies a sense of life. The history of art is fi lled with images of fl ying angels and battling
soldiers on running horses. Some modern artists such as the Futurists and Cubists created
abstracted representations showing multiple aspects of humans and objects suggesting the
images were moving or that the viewer was moving around the objects. When fi lmmaking
came into existence many secrets were revealed about the nature of movement. One of the
earliest and still the greatest documentations of the movement of people and animals was
conducted by Eadweard Muybridge. In 1877, his technique of creating a series of still
images of a horse trotting proved that all four of a horse's hooves were off the ground at
points during the action. The experiments by scientists such as Harold Edgarton in the mid-
20th century using special lighting devices and high-speed cameras were able to capture
shots of a bullet passing through an apple with the clear image of the bullet suspended in
air. Some of the photos Edgarton made had shutter speeds of one one-hundred-millionth of
a second. So the questions are “What can we learn from this, what do things look like when
they move, and how do we capture this impression of movement in a still image?”
No
Movement
