Part of the magic of the movies comes from the fact that within them, we have free rein to play with time. Filmmakers can speed up real-time footage, slow it down, pause it, rewind it—all in the name of enhancing storytelling and cinematography. The ability to change the speed of video has important applications outside the film world as well, such as helping scientists and researchers observe processes that happen too quickly or too slowly for the human eye to catch (the flapping of hummingbird wings or how traffic patterns flow in a city, for instance). It is perhaps most widely put to use in the world of sports and sports broadcasting, where instant replays and photo finishes often determine the outcome of games and competitions. Slow motion in particular is useful for observing style and form—hence its popularity as an exercise in acting and improv classes. Students are asked to play out scenes in slow motion, with the goal of dissecting their decisions and the finer complexities of interaction in a scene. The technical term for slow motion is “overcranking,” a term that originates from the early days of filmmaking, when cameras had to be manually cranked to operate. The idea behind it is that video
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