ShutterSpeed

Let me preface this entry by saying that anyone who doesn’t give thanks to and/or think about the original Matrix on a daily basis is a fool. Period. There is no excuse for not doing so. It is your mind’s right for giving you the ability to do things like, well, live and breathe.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen the aforementioned film, go out, buy — not rent — buy it and watch it seven or eight times… I’ll wait… good. Great film, huh?

Now you know the scene when you think Neo is about to smoke one of those suited fools on top of the building only to find out that the guy has the kind of agility and quickness that make Barry Sanders and Fred Astaire look like Barry Manilow and Fred Flinstone as he dodges bullets? If not, here is a picture:

Well, that’s just dandy and drool inducing. And since this is precisely the scene that kept me on the couch in my parents’ basement for the better part of a decade eating Rasin Bran and living out my prime, I decided to pay homage to it with a Prep Athlete of the week photo.

My subject, Kyle “Did he just do that?” Grott. His ability to make opposing defensive backs look like my dad on ice skates was good enough reason for me to want to make him look Matrixesque.

The above photo is the final version. To read more on how the shot was made and how my assistant’s foot speed  played a crucial role, read on by clicking “continue reading” below.

Thanks for looking.

Below are the initial efforts to make Kyle Grott look more baaaad.

For this 6-second exposure, I fired two lights on either side of his face in the middle shot. For the other two, my assistant ran to either side as Grott made catching poses. This didn’t work out. I wanted him to look like he was standing still in the middle, but moving so quickly that he was catching everything within range. Unfortunately, this pose wasn’t too cool and my assistant’s bum knee kept his light in the frame (as seen in the red circle).

For this frame, I brought in 20-year veteran Michael “Speed” Smith to run the manual light. for the catching poses — I think Smith’s cunning know-how of how to run a route scared Grott, but he didn’t say. With Smith’s increased mobility and route running, the shot started to take shape.

It was getting closer by this, the 8th frame or so, but it still looked sort of goofy. I made the comment that Grott looks more like he’s releasing some sort of demonic state… or that Casper the ghost is flying out of him.

We decided to move on to a frame that  made Grott look like he was catching a bunch of passes. This, however, didn’t work because the still shot of him in the middle kind of mucked the rest of the Grotts up. In the end, we just made a Grott ball catching wreath design. Though he didn’t dodge any bullets during the shoot, Grott still looked pretty athletic… and a lot less wooden than Keanu Reeves when he’s “acting.”