Poor Image: Slow Motion Fall

Surely we can find something better than this?

It looks like the girl's running and about to dodge a badly-drawn CGI tree.

Agreed; the crop/format really hampers the pic. I'm not sure that this could be adequately pic'd without something animated or a lampshade of some sort...leaning on calling it a BUPKIS case.

edited 15th Dec '14 6:25:55 AM by Willbyr

The current image is just bad. Fell it.

Could [1]◊ work from Dredd?

A couple from Watchmen

[2]◊

[3]◊

[4]◊ this shot is clearer but does "slow motion" apply to a comic book?

edited 15th Dec '14 9:27:41 AM by arbiter099

Dredd was the first thing that came to mind, but once I get the blu-ray release of Cowboy Bebop (any day now), I plan on getting a pic of Spike falling from the church window in episode 5.

The current image is a Keep Until Better Image Suggested for me. I think it's better than nothing. I like 4.2, though. 4.2 is nice.

I'm trying to upload the aforementioned Cowboy Bebop example, but the image uploader is giving me an error not related to the file itself.

The Dredd pic is not loading in my computer, so 4.2 will do.

How do any of those get the slow-motion part across?

Because the shot is often framed in a specific way and the image shows that. Ideally it will call to mind examples the reader has already seen, since they're usually similar, visually. If not, it at least helps set the tone.

Of course it would be even better if we could get it as an animated gif.

I figured the glass twirling around them helped get the slo-mo across. Sure, it's also Destination Defenestration but at full speed glass usually isn't shown like that.

Slow motion is, by definition, impossible to illustrate properly without animation, so I don't think straight examples will work, but a lampshaded or parodied instance just might.

I think this logic works well enough. You don't see falling glass shards that way in a normal speed fall.

I fail to see how that's logical at all. You're going to see the same thing in a still image regardless of how fast or slow the original playback was. You might not notice the glass shards at normal speed, but they'd still be there, however briefly, and could in theory be captured in a still image.

edited 16th Dec '14 12:01:57 AM by MrL1193

I like the one with the smiley face.

It might be technically impossible to illustrate it, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to give the illusion of illustrating it. IT's like you can say it's impossible to illustrate 3D with an image, since an image is flat, but it's certainly possible. Likewise with slow motion, there are certain cues we expect to see in slow motion that we don't expect to see in a fast action shot, even if we're talking about a still image. The clear focus on the glass is one of those details.

edited 16th Dec '14 2:27:47 AM by AnotherDuck

And also the general clarity of focus. There's no motion blur.

The image uploader is still broken, but the admins are aware of it.

I don't know how long it'll be before it gets fixed, so here's my Cowboy Bebop suggestion as a preview.◊

The fall sequence itself is actually over 2 minutes long, so I can get you pics of various points of Spike's fall, from when he's thrown out the window, to almost when he hits the ground. I found this shot was the best combo of showing who he is without losing too much detail, and being able to see that he's actually falling.

edited 16th Dec '14 4:25:17 AM by DRCEQ

I have absolutely no confidence that people will notice such a small detail as a lack of motion blur on glass shards. It's not nearly as noticeable as 3D qualities in 2D illustration. (And before you suggest it, I think that pointing it out in the caption would just look very nitpick-y.)

Also, I don't like 4.2 at wiki size even as far as the "fall" part of the trope goes. The guy's pose almost makes it look like he's dancing against some weird backdrop.

I remember a red paint argument involving dancing. The trope is called Slow-Motion Fall. It's not called Slow Motion Dancing. The liquid an argument that it looks like dancing holds sure isn't water.

I must confess that I don't understand what you're trying to say. Could you please rephrase that?

Page images don't exist in a vacuum. If the trope name says it's about a fall, claiming it looks like dancing is ignoring the context of the image.

How about a Multi-Part Picture with three screencaps of the same shot that show things other than glass/debris having moved in each frame a moderate amount? I think the moving images with broken glass definitely have the most dramatic feel to them, but the debris itself probably hurts the ability of the image to tell the story since broken things are less recognizable and would require someone viewing it to really think about it to "see" the slowmo going on.

Is there some cartoon that does this and has instantly recognizable objects falling with a character? I have some incredibly vague memory of it being done in such a way on Family Guy or American Dad, but that's questionable since my memory is...eh.

Recommendation(with me doing none of the work since that's how I roll and I lack possession of the media in question): how about the opening scene from The Matrix Reloaded with Trinity? If memory serves, there isn't a lot of debris in at least some parts of that shot, although all that crazily shiny black leather may not be much better.

Time to go back under my rock.

Now I can't unsee the guy dancing! But I like 4.2 nonetheless.

Context may influence the reader's interpretation, but it's still not desirable for the image to have a confusing appearance. The other suggestions definitely don't look like dancing, so I don't see why you'd set your heart on using the one image that does. (Not that I'm particularly happy with the other suggestions so far, but at least the non-window ones clearly illustrate falling without Destination Defenestration.)

I honestly have no clue how one would read the Comediant's fall in that image in a way that's not slow motion. If he had been falling at normal speed, the shards wouldn't be visible to the naked eye like that because they'd be falling and flipping through the air at a terribly high speed, not to mention blurred.