*Note that there isn't much difference in figure three from figure two. The addition of spot light is most noticeable on the "M" where the two triangles meet- the shade is lighter.
It is very amazing to learn about how
much time and how many special effects are needed in order to produce a movie
that can look as realistic as possible. There is need for stunt men, scale models,
dummies, various stages, and much, much more. Out of all the possible things needed
to capture a satisfying visual, we will be looking at how directors attempt to
create realistic jumps from very high places. The two films in this discussion
will be the Titanic and and the Dark Knight Rises.
Titanic- When the ship
hits the iceberg, the ship begins to sink and people begin jumping off. Already,
the ship is actually just a large set in which people can act on. When the
director needed to show a steeper degree of sinking, then the cameras were
tilted more as they modified the back drops. To show that people were jumping
from the tallest part of the ship, the actors were made to wear black suits and
jump off small set ups with large ranging motion. Once the directors got these
recorded they used the motion to catch the gravity and weight of the person in
order to add CG to the rest of the fall. This was done because the actors, even
the stuntmen, could get injured badly.
Dark Knight Rises- In this movie,
the director was all about doing as much as he could with actual events. There is
a scene in the movie where the airplane gets damaged in the air. Rather than
using scaling objects or CG in order to fulfill the action, the director actually
has stunt men in the air hanging off of the airplane with the cameras rolling
from inside a helicopter to catch the action.
Whether it was the time in which
the movie was made or whether it depended on the director, the requirements for
both jumps varied. However, both seemed very realistic. The shot in the Titanic
was during the night, so the person falling from up high off the ship didn’t
have to be clear, as long as the shadowed movements seemed real. In the Dark Knight,
the fact that no special computer effects were used helped showcase the honest
jumps in the particular scene.
An Arizona having a bad day that is lured in to the building by some lady in a swim suit. He comes out a changed man after hitting the club.
I did a little improvising since my first idea was for the can to be lured into recycling with the help of a trail of Cheerios. I did this stop-motion on my own which is difficult to do. I held my camera and an improvised tripod at times to take all the stills and I slowly kept adjusting the can. Sometimes the can would fall over so I would lose the placement of the camera angle and it was difficult to readjust. Overall, it was entertaining watching my finished product. The beginning is an instrumental from a "sad" song, the laughter is Gabriel Iglesias during his standup, and the last song is Lil John's "Turn down for what."
I went to the 12pm showing of Victoriana. I was surprised to find that most of the fanatics at the film festival were adults who had bought passes. Even inside the theatre, I was 1 of about 6 in their 20's out of the other who were in their 40+. I had this naive misconception that only Hollywood can make good movies, but this movie was great! It started a bit slow, but as the movie progressed it became very interesting especially when their was an incident that was supposed to end in major jail time. After seeing what the artists are capable of I will defintely take great effort in catching their movies next time they are in town.
If you’re like me then going to the
movies is for pure entertainment and scoping out science properties in physics
in movie scenes is not part of the experience. You are purely involved in the
movie that you just follow the storyline and all of the cinematic actions that
come with it. However, sometimes the physical properties that are incorrectly
expressed are so ludicrous that they become more obvious than normal. One
concept that we will focus on will be the act of jumping. While we will look at
jumping overall, the properties that are involved in a jump such as momentum,
air resistance, and the force of a land, will be more closely speculated as
they become violated in the featured films.
The
Big Boss- In this Bruce Lee movie, Bruce Lee fights a crowd
of opponents in the ice factory. During the fight he uses an opponent as a
tactic to leap and land over to the opposite side from the crowd to get away.
What is wrong with the scene is that Bruce Lee does not attempt to gain neither
speed nor momentum in order to make this leap. He simply takes a couple steps,
jumps on the man for extra cushion, and makes a great leap. There was no
momentum from his simple two steps that would have allowed him such a great
jump. In order for this attempt to be successful, one must first try to
calculate in their head how far back to stand to create a runway to build
speed. The only thing that can help get better height from the ground is by the
force that one uses against the ground by lowering the body closer to the ground
to push off. Now, if we want to involve direction in our action/reaction force,
then there must be momentum which is created with motion and speed. If Bruce
Lee just wanted to jump over the man with no arch motion and land close to his
original spot, he could have done so by the amount of force that he used to
push off the ground and by how fast the man was moving towards him. Because Lee
was the one moving, he needed to add more steps to his running start to create
a quicker motion and increase his weight as he landed on the man in order to
jump off the man and land further away from the crowd as it was portrayed in
the movie.
@ 0:32 sec
Crouching
Tiger Hidden Dragon- This film features Lucy Liu where she
is dressed in all black attempting to fight a man in the dark hours of the night.
This fighting scene has a few properties out of place, but there is one in
particular where her jump is unrealistic. The actress decides to jump during
her fight, but seems to defy gravity and air resistance. Instead of going up in
motion and then coming back down from her jump’s apex, she glides in mid air
for a few seconds; ultimately, making air resistance and gravity zero longer
than what would’ve been appropriate. Whether it is an object or a human,
anything that pushes itself off the ground goes up and then comes down, while
experiencing a point where the entity stays in mid air for a certain period of
time known as the apex. Sometimes there is an arc that is noticeable and
sometimes there isn’t during the motion. There is nothing about Liu’s jump that
would cause her apex to withstand for more than a few seconds since gravity is
quickly pulling her down after she has gone against it during her jump. With
this said, it is obvious that the character is not following the laws of
physics.
@ 0:54 sec
Iron
Man-
This movie involves super strength powers that seem realistic, yet defy some
properties while in action. There is a scene in which Iron Man leaps and lands
with his fist to the ground that creates a huge crack effect on the ground.
While his landing force may potentially have the power to break the cement, his
force onto the ground was not reciprocated as any force acted on any object is
supposed to do. Iron Man was not affected from the land at all, which in turn
violates the law of physics in action and reaction. Whenever there is a force
acted upon an object, the same force used in principal must be the same force
that is returned. For example, when a man punches another man in the face, then
the force of the fist gives the man a bloody eye, but in return the same force
breaks the man’s knuckles simultaneously. In comparison, the force that Iron
Man used when he put his fist to the ground should have acted on him as well
and resulted in severe damage to himself. If it was not to kill off their
superhero in a cool stunt, the Iron Man would have broken a lot of bones and
would have ruined his awesome gear.
@ 0:13 sec
Ultimately, while these films may have
intended to produce the most realistic scene possible they failed to follow
through. In each scene, the character is depicted as doing everything right in
order to jump, but whether it is the preparation, the act or the final step,
one thing is out of place failing to generate full reality. Because the movies
referenced involve sometime of hero or heroine, it is safe to say that these
fabricated actions were meant to give the character more credibility as a
fighter. For Bruce Lee it depicted him as the man that can do it all with
little effort. For Lucy Liu’s character, it showed her savvy ways of combat.
And finally for Iron Man, it helped keep his character persona as a cocky
superhero that always knows how to make a big entrance anywhere he landed.
Regardless, these scenes were not what a physicist would like to see because of
the errors they contain. Hopefully, they don’t hate going to the theatre because
of this.
