Minute 4: “Are there any Agents?”

Transcript

Transcribed automatically from the audio, and imperfect for it — names and punchlines suffer worst. Useful for finding a moment, not for quoting one.

0:00Welcome to The Matrix Minute, a podcast where we discuss the first Matrix film one minute at a time. I'm Phil, and I'm sending two units. They're picking her up now. I'm Jake, and when I was 10 years old, I had really long hair, and I went to the hairstylist to get a haircut, and I showed her a picture of Neo, and I said, I would like my hair to look like this. Oh, that's awesome. That's so good. I am Tim, and my sister's best friend, I don't trust her till this day, because when she said she didn't like The Matrix, my 12-year-old kind of just built this distrust for her. Just automatically going, I don't know. I still can't, like, there's something wrong, and I just keep thinking, like, she said The Matrix, she fell asleep on The Matrix, and I was like, what?

0:42How could anyone fall asleep on The Matrix? Okay, that was a long trivia, but... They need to wake up. Anyway, welcome to episode four. Hi. Minute four. And this is minute four of the first 1999 Matrix film. Um, apologies if we're still kind of rambling a little bit. Uh, we're still kind of, you know, getting our feet wet and trying to cut our teeth here, you know what I mean? Those are our feet getting wet. Bloop. Yeah. So, you know, we're just going, we're just continuing this. It's a publicity stunt. It's a publicity. Okay. So what happens in this minute? So this is minute four, and it's bullet-time! Triddy kills the brains out of everybody and talks to Morpheus right before Agent Brown

1:23and the cops find her. The minute ends as she runs to the roof. Can we just take a moment to appreciate that this is the first time we get to see bullet time? That's right. I was going to say, bullet-time! bullet-time! Was just a revolutionary... Yeah, we could just make a song about bullet-time, you know? bullet-time! Oh, bullet-time! It's working! Kiss me! Spinning 360! So guys, let's talk about bullet-time. bullet-time has its origins in John Gata. The Gata Force. John Gata was the head of the Visual Effects... Who looks like he's from the Matrix movies. Visual Effects Department. Should we do this later?

2:04No. Now. It's the one process which made the movie earn its best special effects Oscar. And that's where we're going to talk about it now. Yes. Episode four. I am unprepared! We're doing it live. That's fine. Live! So John Gata... Yes, John Gata! John Gata was the head of the VFX department. Yeah, he's the visual effects supervisor on the film. His company was what? Gata Force? Gata Force. No, no, it wasn't. No? That's just... Andy Wachowski said Gatorade. I always believed him. Yeah. I thought it was actually called Gata Force. No. Gata Force, you know, LLC. He and his team invented what was a super cool method of shooting what's today known as bullet time. Did they invent it? Yeah, I think so.

2:44I mean, I don't know if they invented it like per se, like the shot, but they invented the method, how they shot bullet-time. Okay. So in short, what is bullet-time? bullet-time is basically taking a movement. So in this case, it's Trinity jumping and doing a kick, right? Suspending that or slowing down time for, I don't know, a second, less than a second, while the camera does a rotation around the subject. And it's two different speeds. One speed is the camera speed going really fast. Right. But the other speed...

3:25And the time is slowed down in the film. Yeah, the time is slowed down for the subject. So it's a slow motion... Unrealistic slow motion that could only be done by a robot or something like that to get that sort of speed. So the film is in slow motion for a moment, while the camera is actually in real time spinning around. And very fast. And very fast. Now, what's interesting about bullet-time is that, first of all, the effect is just super cool. I think that's like a unanimous. Like if the whole world voted, like, is bullet-time cool? It'd be yes. 100% unanimous vote. And it's also, what do you think of when you think of The Matrix? Yes. Most people think of bullet-time glasses. I think most people think of Neo going... Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Like, you know, if you play charades, that's going to be the first one. Yeah, that's going to be it.

4:06bullet-time. It might be, you know, the first big guess would be the, you know, the balloon that dances in front of car salesmen. It's like, it might be the first vote. And then, oh, bullet-time. Exactly. So what's great about bullet-time is how they achieve this effect. Essentially, if you watch the making of documentaries for The Matrix, John Gata and the Gata Force set up, I don't even know how many cameras. It's certainly, certainly 100, over 100 probably, SLR cameras. So basically, still cameras. Yeah. In an entire sphere or circle around what they were shooting.

4:47And what they did is they timed it in a way where sequentially each camera would take what would be a frame in the movie. And it would go... And make an entire rotation. So in the end, what you're actually doing is you're shooting film just in a very unconventional setup. But it's true that the... And you'd capture that moment. Yeah. Super quick stop motion. Yeah. Yes. They're actually, you know, doing photography on two different speeds because like the... Like it's actual real time how it's taking the photo. That's what I'm saying. It's going all around because you have to capture the motion. It was on a green screen too. Right. Oh, that's true. It was on a green screen. And then they had to use digital morphing effects to put them all together.

5:34Oh, no. I didn't know that. To blend the frames. The cameras all around. You have to get rid of them because otherwise, you know, it's a 360. If you move to the other side, you have cameras. But Phil's saying you have to blend... To make it smoother. The frames. To make it look nicer. If you look at some of the footage on the behind the scenes, you can see the raw takes of all the photos. It's not... Yeah. It's pretty stop motion-y. But this is what I love about bullet-time because when you compare it to the second and third films, I have to say I was very disappointed watching the bullet-time effects in those films because they went full digital. We're not going to cover the second and third ones, by the way. Did they use the same technique or no? No, no. This is what I was very disappointed. I remember watching the movie in theaters. I don't know, again, if this is retroactively what I thought back then, but later I realized

6:14that it was sort of a... Like, I don't want to say a cop-out, but it was an easier way out because it was a full CG, so it was all on the computer. Oh, that was buttery... It was buttery. It was buttery orange men running around. And it was just... To me, it completely missed the essence of why bullet-time worked. And I think why it worked is because it felt so real and organic when you had this technique. And I think that was why it was convincing. Like, this shot with Trinity is like, you're like, whoa, you know, immediately taken aback that she's doing this cool effect. And you ask yourself, how'd they do that? You know, that's the first thing you ask yourself. I think that's the fun part. And that's the fun part. But in the second and third film, you go, oh, it's CG. Yeah. And then, yeah, you don't really...

6:55I mean, to play the devil's advocate... Agent Smith or Orange. They just wanted a desired effect. And first, you know, this was the most achievable way to do it without, you know, CGI and that it was done. And then they have... Can you imagine if they wanted CGI in the Chris Matrix? It's just like PlayStation 2. Can you imagine? I don't want to. Trinity's face melts. It's like she turns into a... Just scary, uncanny valley. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even looking right now at the shot, you... It looks absolutely realistic and beautiful as far as her movement and everything. The green screen stuff is a bit more obvious. Looking at it right now, the little shadows on the wall are a bit funky. Shadows on the wall. But I think it doesn't matter. Definitely the emotion and the...

7:35Of course it doesn't matter. I'm just saying that, you know, compared to when we watched it the first time, it was absolutely 100% bulletproof bullet-time. You have no idea. Like, what is this? Registered bulletproof bullet-time. It's one of the things that made it such a big hit, the movie. Oh, and... Everyone's trying to copy it. And her running on the walls. And running on the walls, I guess. Here's a... And now featuring the Wachowski Brothers present... bullet-time. And running on the walls. I know. Okay. I have no knowledge to give you of these trivia scientific things you guys are doing. Scientific. But I can give you a little bit of a personal... It's not my personal. Well, then it's not a personal one. I watched it with my nephew, who's 14, never saw it before.

8:16And one of the questions I asked him was like, okay, so when the movie starts, you see Trinity doing these really crazy, like a little bit... Carotid chops. Physical bending stuff. What was going on in your mind? Like, did you think that it was because she was a superhero? Did she have like magical powers? Or what did you think? And he just... And it was funny. I was like, what are you going to say? He's just like... I just thought she was like really good at Kung Fu. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's... Which is funny because to me, I always thought it was weird. I was going to say, this is in my notes. I was like, now that Trinity is attacking, killing everyone with ease. If you were watching this for the first time, what would you think of that?

8:57I think that I was bordering on the... Like... Like what's going on here? Yeah, implausible. Like she has extra powers. Yeah. Like what's going on, right? Magical dust. I love it that Trinity, like after she destroys everybody and then there's this one wide shot from like the ceiling, right? Looking down. And she makes this pose like after, you know, after killing the last guy and does that. And then she says, well, Tim, you can say it for me. Poop. She says poop. It's in the old script, right? She goes poopoo. No, but Trinity does love saying shit a lot.

9:38It's magical. Yes. And that's what I like about it because it's giving you an insight into the fact that she's beating up average Joes with her superpowers like it's a regular thing. But she's actually in trouble. Quite a but. You know what I mean? Making you even more curious about what this whole world is about. That's what I think. To add to that, we were watching this clip right now. I think there's a beautiful sort of complete opposite of how you see her first when she's like doing all these cool moves. She's got her hair slicked back. She's got all these like cool. And then after she beats up those guys and she says the magical poop word, she looks so with the shell and the lighting is different.

10:19And she looks so vulnerable and she's so scared and like her hair is like falling apart. It's like Morpheus. I need your help. Well, yeah. And then she calls Morpheus. That's good. Then she calls Morpheus. That's how it's supposed to be, man. This is how it's set up. Yeah. And then she calls Morpheus. By the way, I just, I love that shot where she goes, all right. It's like the lighting. It's so good. I don't know if you have to describe it to us because listeners can't see her mouth. It's magical. Yeah. The lighting is beautiful. The dark shadows. Describe the shot for us. She's, it's a mid shot. It's sort of like a middle of the road shot. It's not a wide shot, but it's like in the middle. It's like from, from waist up and she's holding the phone. She's like, Morpheus, they found out. I don't know how. And so, what do you like about the shot? It's just like when she turns around looking, you know, beyond the camera.

11:03You can just see her eyes. Yeah. And just like expressing a lot of emotion in there. It's wonderful. And it's probably, and this is probably the movie that influenced me the most when it comes to lighting. Cause I just love Bill Pope's wonderful cinematography. Bill Pope. Talk about Bill Pope. No, I'm leaving that for later. Is this the, the fine, the Pope trivia style? Not Pope. Bill Pope will come later. What else can we cover? I don't know. I'm just honestly. Well, I'm telling you, there's this other shot where Trinity gets to the fire exit. And she looks down? Yes. She looks down and the agent is on the, you know, is on the bottom floor. Right. And is, it's another wonderful comic book inspired shot. It's, it's exactly out of anything, anything that I, you ever seen come from the eighties.

11:47That awesome, like long shadow coming from the agent. I love it. I mean, it's funny because. Like most of the movies compositions are made that way. They're just incredibly precise and specific, you know, they're here to evoke. It's like the transition from, you know, what is it? Dr. Caligari. What is, what is, what is it? Yes. German expressionism. The ocean German stuff. That inspired like. The cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Yeah. They're like, I'm way over my head. And that inspired like the film noir that inspired the sort of eighties comics that in the end inspired matrix. And you just have this long shadow. Yeah. Metaphorical shadow. Light and dark. Well, what I like. Symmetrical framing and everything. Go on.

12:27Do you have any more notes? I like how Agent Smith. Well, Agent Smith always turns and that's great. Well, he's a turning guy. Do you see that like when Trinity goes up on the stairs on the fire exit, he just makes a turn to the right. This is true then. He will be turning. He's mathematically calculating which he'll go. And it just, and that's makes it, and you know, that just makes it look like it's just gives you, it's just like feeding you with like curiosity. What is going on? But the fights are so cool. So you're just being dragged into this world. What I liked about this opening is that the music, let's talk about the music for a moment, is very intense. When Trinity encounters the agents.

13:08And why is that interesting? It's because the agents are a true threat. On the phone with Morpheus, she goes, are there agents? He goes, yes. And that very serious tone tells you that these guys are something that probably, or most likely, can kill you. There's something else. There's something else going on behind these agents. There's something different from the cop and the agent. It's not like, you know, that's cool what I like, setting up the seriousness. Yeah. And they're not like beefy monsters. You know, they could have done a hard Arnold Schwarzenegger and just cloned, like, you know, to duplicate, you know, three of them.

13:48No, Lieutenant. Your men are already dead. Just imagine, like, these bodybuilders being Smiths and, like, these really tight suits. What if the movie came out in 1984? Well, you know, he wouldn't have a jacket. He would just have the shirt and tie. Leather, leather. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes. Just the shirt and tie. Just the shirt and tie and the glasses. Hello, my name is. I have the glasses and the little tube, speaker tube, just wraps around his body, just through the muscle, like a vein. And then he goes, no, Lieutenant, your men are already dead. Like ski goggles, you know? Ski goggles, because they do karate. Yes, yes. I can see that. 80s Matrix. That's how you know they're a real threat, because they're Nike shoes. It would have easily fit, like, this kind of concept would have easily been in the 80s.

14:30Would have been made in the 80s. Yeah, but it would be a crazy different film. It would be what you're talking about right now. Yeah. What would Trinity wear, though, in the 80s movie? Oh, I don't know. I think she would wear... She would have definitely big hair, like, puffy... She wouldn't have short hair. No, I don't know, because maybe they're like... I don't know. Well, I mean, totally. Depends who made it. Depends who made it. It depends who made it, true, but I think... There was, like, cyberpunk stuff in the 80s. Yeah, maybe, like, neon. Okay, anything else? Yes, one more thing. Let's just talk about what Morpheus says and what Trinity's saying over the phone. I just did. Well, I mean, yeah, but, like, someone...

15:10The line was traced. She doesn't know how. See, that's the thing. I never picked up on that. Nope. It's too early for that stuff. I still don't know. Too early for that stuff. You're not concentrated on that stuff. The line was traced. I've never even watched it a hundred times. Who's tracing the phone? Tell me now. Well, is this foreboding? Is this telling us already of the Judas in the party? No way. Seriously? Yeah. Yeah, that's a whole... Like, they're, like... Who else would have traced the line? This stuff goes over your head. I think because it's such a simple concept of Judas. You just... And there's a shot of him talking later on. So you never think about this previous stuff. You never go... I love that stuff. When did it begin? Look at me. Look at me. It took 18 years to figure that out. I mean, to hear...

15:51That's all I have for the minute. Yeah, I think me too. Oh, last thing for me on the minute. The final shot is Trinity going up the ladder and running on top of the roof. And in the background is a vista of a city. Beautiful vistas. But you'll be able to tell later that this is actually just a physical backdrop on the set. Yeah. And I can always... Yeah, you can always tell. Yeah. All right. Okay. We'll see you in the next episode. Bye. I'm Phil. You can reach me at... At Phil on Twitter. I mean, at Phil Dragish. I'm Phil. I'm Jake. And you... Just the one. The one Phil. You can reach me on Twitter.

16:31The one. At Jake Dragish. I'm Tim. And you can reach me on Twitter at Timo Meierski. And I cannot tell if it's a backdrop or not. Really? Rate us well on iTunes. Goodbye. Oh, tell us... Wait, they should tell us their things. Their thoughts about this minute. Yes. What did you think of this minute? Absolutely. We want to know. Did you trust the agents or did you trust Trinity? Who did you trust? Okay, bye. See you next episode. See you next episode, everybody.