Also known as Ramping, Adrenaline Time is a frenetic style of video editing where the action is partly sped up and partly at normal speed (or even slower). For example, there could be an Establishing Shot of helicopter footage that is initially at double speed, then changes to normal speed as it approaches its destination. Or, in a historical battle sequence, an attacker's leap could be fast forwarded, then his sword swung in slow motion, then zipping through the stricken enemy's collapse, then showing the next blow in slow mo again, and so on.
See also Overcrank and Undercrank. Compare Bullet Time for when there's only regular and slow mo action without any fast forwarding. See also Binge Montage.
A faithful servant of the Rule of Cool and one the standard techniques for Mundane Made Awesome.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Death Note does it a lot. Who knew eating potato chips could be so epic? Though it should be noted the original manga doesn't do nearly as much.
Film
- Zack Snyder:
- 300 and all of its parodies and pastiches. Done to emulate a comic book panel into the movie.
- Used during several action scenes in The Matrix movies. Examples include characters leaping high in the air and smashing down, and three fights between Neo and Agent Smith: in the subway station in The Matrix, dozens of Agent Smiths in the "Burly Brawl" sequence in The Matrix Reloaded, and the final battle in The Matrix Revolutions.
- Used in Hot Fuzz during one of the later scenes, when the Heroes have finally broken out the big guns and firing off shotguns at the villagers.
- Wanted: A heavily worked trope in the film version. The assassins of the story explicitly train in the use of Adrenaline Time and the director loves to explore the visuals.
- An example where the audience is not meant to interpret it as the result of editing, but rather as being "real" in the film's universe: At one point in the seventh Harry Potter film, a Mook crashes through a window to attack Kingsley Shacklebolt, who hits him with a spell that causes him to slow down, momentarily freeze in the air, then fly back in fast-reverse, with the shards of glass re-forming the window.
- X-Men: Apocalypse: Quicksilver's Super-Speed scenes are shown this way; he sees everything in slow motion, but the movie will quickly alternate to the "standard perception" of time, which is much faster.
- In Thir13en Ghosts, the ghosts rapidly flicker between overcrank, undercrank, normal speed, and reversal when viewed.
- Some of the fights in Kingsman: The Secret Service slow down to appreciate important details or just for Rule of Cool.
Live Action TV
- MTV does it to speed up action in Cribs and The Real World.
- Survivor uses it to speed up the action.
- CSI: Miami does this practically every episode with helicopter establishing shots.
- The TV show Legend of the Seeker, based on the Sword of Truth novels, feature these kinds of scenes pretty extensively.
- Angel: The fight scenes started using this trope somewhere in the latter part of its third season.
- The series Spartacus: Blood and Sand makes extensive use of this in every single fight scene.
- Bitchin'Kitchen:Liberally applied to show the full prepwork and cooking process within seconds instead of minutes or hours.
Music
- "We Need da Money", the first track on Da Yoopers' We're Still Rockin', speeds up slightly with each successive line, bumping the song gradually higher and higher by half-steps.
- All over the place in the music video
for Eric Church's "Homeboy".
- Lindsey Stirling: The video for "Shatter Me" (featuring Lzzy Hale on vocals) portrays a slowly spinning porcelain ballerina in alternating slow and rapid motion, symbolizing her frozen outer existence as it intercuts with her inner exploration of her confined world.
Video Games
- Achron: A common tactic, since all players have the capability of modifying the rate they travel through time. This leads to players dropping into slow motion during pitch battles to better micromanage their forces, then jumping into fast forward after the battle is over to catch up to the present again.
- Played with in F.E.A.R. - when the player's "Slow-Mo" ability is activated, everything slows down, but for a half-second after it's turned off, everything speeds up faster than normal, before "snapping" back to regular speed. Much more obvious with certain Videogame Setpieces, especially when Alma is involved. There is one case in Perseus Mandate where the F.E.A.R. Sergeant is suddenly brought in front of a bloodied operation room: a patient is seen walking towards the Sergeant before stopping in front of a glass door that separates the two of them. The patient's movement was Undercranked.
- In Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning's Army of One uses this. Because you can still input commands while it's going, it also gives you a huge advantage in terms of speed and timing. Kind of an Inverted Interface Screw.
- [PROTOTYPE] uses this during charged attacks and targeting, as well as when you start getting your ass kicked. It's actually quite helpful in both cases.
Real Life
- There have been actual experiments to determine if people are able to perceive and process information at a faster rate when stressed. The results have been mixed.
- One experiment concluded that the effect "is a function of recollection, not perception: a richer encoding of memory may cause a salient event to appear, retrospectively, as though it lasted longer."
- A meta-analysis by the University of Turku questioned the construct validity of this experiment.
- A meta-analysis
- Another experiment seems to show that action preparation actually does slows time perception by increasing sensory processing speed.
- One experiment concluded that the effect "is a function of recollection, not perception
