Those oft-imitated shots – now universally known as Bullet Time – required serpentine arrays of meticulously aligned cameras, and months of planning, for a brief scene featuring two or three actors. Madhouse, the makers of Akira and Metropolis, prepared a custom reel of explosions of various types and sizes for the Wachowskis, who were particularly interested in the ways that natural phenomena – weather, water, flames – are depicted in anime as intelligent obstacles, characters in their own right.Īs the team tossed ideas around for one hellacious fight scene that became known in-house as the Burly Brawl, Gaeta realized that the innovative technology he and his crew developed for The Matrix's ultra slo-mo action sequences would not be sufficient to bring the Wachowskis' new vision to the screen. Over the next year, a river of drawings, storyboards, and stage plans flowed into Eon's asset-management network, which was christened (what else?) the Zion Mainframe.įor visual ideas and inspiration, the group cranked up Alien, 2001, Vertigo, Apocalypse Now, Koyaanisqatsi, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, along with documentary footage of car crashes, robotics manufacturing, 19th-century submarines, glassblowers at work, the drilling of the Chunnel, the heavyweight bouts of Rocky Marciano, and the explosion of the Hindenburg. Hanging above it were pulldown screens linked to 3-D workstations so that art and designs could be discussed collectively. There – at the home base of Eon, the Wachowskis' production company – Gaeta, concept artists Geof Darrow and Steve Skroce, production designer Owen Patterson, producer Grant Hill, and the brothers brainstormed around 'the most James Bond table you've ever seen,' Gaeta says. With four Academy Award nominations to their credit, the members of the core Matrix team reconvened in February 2000 at a secret location near the beach outside of Los Angeles. | Matthew Welch So what does a visual effects supervisor do to follow up the Matrix trilogy? Gaeta says his next project will be 'some combination of Akira, Busby Berkeley, and Apocalypse Now.' For Reloaded and Revolutions, the Wachowskis dreamed up action sequences that were so over-the-top they would require their special-effects supervisor, John Gaeta, to reinvent cinematography itself.

The Matrix raised the bar for action films by introducing new levels of realism into stunt work and visual effects.

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