10 Movies That Ruined Awesome Cinematic Tricks
7. Speed Ramping - 300
Speed ramping is the process by which a sequence - typically an action scene - is filmed at a high frame-rate and the playback speed adjusted in post-production, allowing directors to switch between varying rates of slow-motion and "normal" speed as they wish.
Perhaps the single most iconic example of speed ramping occurs in The Matrix, what with its various bullet time effects moving between various rates of speed.
The years that followed saw literally hundreds of movies imitate the speed ramping and bullet time effects, before the trick reached arguably its ultimate form in Zack Snyder's 300.
Almost the entire film was shot at a high frame-rate to give Snyder maximum experimentation potential during editing, and so many of the film's biggest action beats use speed ramping to a basically self-parodying degree.
Does it look cool as all hell? Absolutely, but it also felt like an excessive end-point for this cinematic practise, that Snyder had basically taken speed ramping as far as it could possibly go.
As a result, we've seen a lot less of it in the years since 300's release, with even Snyder himself generally deferring to regular slow-motion these days without the constant changes in speed.