nichael@JASPER.PALLADIAN.COM.UUCP (06/15/87)
>> >> Date: Fri, 12 Jun 87 00:51:41 EDT >> From: tim@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Tim Finin) >> Subject: why did the $6,000,000 man run so slowly? >> I had always assumed that he ran slowly for the same reason that the people on "Kung Fu" always fought so slowly; namely that it's technically much easier to depict graphic, physical motion (and violence) in this way. You have the first actor throwing punches that actually connect with the second actor's jaw, except that he's moving more slowly in real time, and so not crippling the second actor with every blow. Once you slow this down a lot, the viewer loses all sense of how much the time is really altered; i.e. the slow motion camera technique masks the slowed down "acting". In the present case, slow motion has the effect of distorting your time sense and allowing the film makers to use other (cheaper?) methods to suggest high-speed to the viewer, e.g. swooshing sounds or tense music. (With regard to these non-visual cues used to suggest high-speed: As others have pointed out, watch the opening of "Star Trek" with the sound turned off. The Enterprise, which would normally sweeping across the screen at Warp N, will, with the usual swooshing sound missing, simply creep across the screen.) NICHAEL
mob@mit-amt.UUCP (Mario O. Bourgoin) (06/20/87)
Because it made the special effects scenes last longer.
CMP.FLATAU@R20.UTEXAS.EDU.UUCP (06/22/87)
I think people have missed the obvious reason that the $6 Meg man ran so slowly. To stretch the plots out to fill an hour time slot. Art -------