How frozen-in-time scenes are shot for movies and TV

In “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” Evan Peters was filmed running on a treadmill in front of a green screen so he could then be placed into these frozen shots, which were filmed at over 3,000 frames per second. On set, these actors and objects were stabilized with wires and poles, but these ingredients and this spilling soup were all added with CG. Frozen-in-time sequences have come a long way thanks to advancements in technology and CGI.

Just look at this time-freeze scene in “The Twilight Zone. ” Here, boy. Come on! Without CG, it was difficult for director Douglas Hayes to hide subtle motions like breathing and shaking.

So he found that the best way to cover up these unavoidable errors was to keep moving the camera, so viewers didn’t even have time to notice. The movement trick is still used today, but modern cameras also allow filmmakers to slow down the visuals by changing the frame rates. Most modern movies are shot at 24 frames per second.

If you increase the frame rate, more images are produced, allowing filmmakers to stretch out and slow the scene down frame by frame. So, for example, this moment in 1999’s “The Matrix” . .

. Freeze it. The camera was actually running at 96 frames per second.

And to capture “Quicksilver time” in “Days of Future Past” and “Apocalypse,” the “X-Men” team used a Phantom camera capable of both filming 3,000 frames per second and moving at 90 miles per hour. So an action that happened in just one second in real time could be extended to 15 seconds. VFX artists can also retime a live-action shot, a technique that was required to make Quicksilver look like he was moving faster than his environment.

That meant rotoscoping the actor out of the original shot frame by frame, then filming him in front of a green screen so he could be retimed separately before adding him back in. Filling these scenes with various frozen characters and background elements can be done both practically and with visual effects. And not everything in the Quicksilver scenes was VFX.

Just look at these dishes propped up by wires and poles. Often practical effects in combination with CG touch-ups can add even more realism, like in 2021’s “The Worst Person in the World,” which leaned heavily into the practical side for this scene, in which the world freezes around the protagonist, Julie. Director Joachim Trier made a creative choice to do most of the film’s frozen-in-time effects in-camera.

Much of this was achieved through the clever craftsmanship of prop master Hedda Virik. When it works, it works, and it creates a magic on set that everyone is just very excited to be a part of. Like when Aksel freezes in the middle of pouring coffee.

To create this effect, Hedda studied photos of real coffee streams and sculpted a replica using polymer clay. It’s not just one line of coffee. It’s water, and water frozen in time is always unique, and you get those little beautiful lines down.

That sculpt was used as the basis for a negative cast, which she poured resin into to add color. So you really want that see-through, lush coffee. There was also real coffee in the pot to get the movement before and after the frozen sequence.

So to keep the real coffee from spilling, Hedda covered the pot’s opening with ultraclear tape. And the resin stream was rigged to a coffee cup with a flexible wire so it could be repositioned on set. While items like the coffee stream needed to be made from scratch, others just needed some clever modifications to appear frozen.

Like these headphones, which were taped to this extra’s shirt to maintain their shape. Sometimes the real thing works, as long as there’s no wind. Similarly, Hedda used tape and metal wire on a real briefcase so it wouldn’t flap.

Inanimate objects are one challenge, but keeping everything in place gets even more difficult when you’re dealing with living, breathing creatures. Animals are very difficult to convince and to get them to do what you want. And I don’t know any animal that just wants to stand still and do nothing.

So these two dogs in the background are completely fake. But the fake pups needed to be placed in unique and dynamic ways, so they wouldn’t just look like stuffed animals. That included breaking one of the stuffed legs.

Like he’s doing a little strut. And holding them down with rocks, so they wouldn’t fall over. Human actors can stand still on command, but maintaining certain positions for long periods of time still requires some extra assistance and can be painful and uncomfortable.

And we were at each location for hours and hours. When you’re doing it again and again and again and again, then you’re going to get tired. Wires are one option, like in this shot from “Apocalypse.

” But they have their own complications. If you use wires all the time, sometimes you’ll have sort of pinching or an unnatural kind of angling. So how did Hedda get everyone to look so steady in this final shot without wires? Tiny wooden blocks.

She brought blocks of all sizes to the set. The ones she chose varied based on the type of footwear. On their own, the blocks would be really easy to spot, so Hedda covered them in nonreflective black tape.

That way, they could blend in to the shadow under an extra’s foot. The best option is to cover up these rigs with people and objects. This moped simply has its kickstand out, but it was blocked from the camera.

Bikes and scooters were a bit more difficult to position, as their kickstands are harder to hide. So Hedda built specialized metal stands to hold them up straight to appear as if they were mid-ride. We had to position something under one of the pedals so that all of the weight could be on the pedal.

Hedda also had to teach the extras how to position their bodies for the scene to look realistic. Foremost, don’t shift your weight. Because when you’re on a bike, you just want to go, right? You are used to being on a bike, and you treat it completely differently to when you have to fake being on a bike.

Even when you use practical for these sequences, a final VFX assist is crucial to put it all together to make it look seamless. The bike and foot rigs, for example, were removed digitally in post. The same goes for those wires and poles in Quicksilver’s scenes.

While animators can stabilize real performances to get rid of any moving and shaking, digital doubles give them much more control. So to get every detail just right, “Days of Future Past” and “Apocalypse” recruited the visual effects studio Rising Sun Pictures. For instance, Rising Sun Pictures created digital versions of these students Quicksilver saves to preserve the delicate balance of keeping these characters frozen in time but not frozen in place.

That’s also why they created a CG version of this table for Quicksilver to surf on. We can use that to interact with any effects that we’re creating. Like here, when the animators rebuilt a car digitally so they could add slo-mo water splashing onto the tires.

You can drive a car through, and that would work in the final shot. But it’s the splash that you needed to sort of slow down that you might not necessarily get correct. Because once you film something with that element in it, that’s what you’ve got.

Techniques like facial replacement can fix continuity errors. As time slows down in “Days of Future Past,” Professor X yells . .

. No! When they actually filmed it, his mouth was closed, but contextually, he would’ve been more into his word. So his original expression was swapped with one where his mouth was wide open.

In any one of these sequences, there’s the moment when time resumes and everything goes back to normal. Since “Worst Person”‘s frozen-in-time sequence ended back with Aksel as he poured coffee, they only had to make a single action return to normal. But for “Days of Future Past,” they had to sort out all the objects Magneto lifted into the air alongside whatever positions Quicksilver placed all these characters in.

On set, people and objects were tossed around using wires and pressurized air. If that scene works and the timing works as we get back into normal time, then we’ll try and keep as much as we can. But only the objects within reason.

All these bits of leftover food and extra plates that land on the ground in the kitchen and keep moving? Fake. Pizza dog, who ended up becoming a favorite on our crew. So, there was a journey through the mansion that was filmed with the cameras.

So there was pizza dog with his jowls sort of flapping, which was a CG head. And here is some slow-moving footage where we’ve taken various takes. And so we would mush that journey behind with the motion blur and the speed so that it feels like, “Oh, this is what it must be like.

” Wow!.