Year: 1999
Significance: Development of bullet time effects

The Wachowski brothers and their VFX supervisor John Gaeta looked east to help inject The Matrix with its hyper-real action beats. Akira director Katsuhiro Otomo’s view-morphing techniques were a major influence on the movie. Multiple cameras, CG and wire work-driven motion played with viewers perceptions and created the rotating, slow-motion bullet-time: a full-throttle extension of traditional time-slice photography. Helping with the wire work was Hong Kong action cinema choreographer Yuen Woo-ping – a veteran Jackie Chan and Jet Li collaborator whose martial arts whirlwind Fist Of Legend had caught the Wachowski’s eye – who also enhanced the Oscar-winning effects team create Neo’s suspended, airborne kung fu fights.