Disney Research Zurich is experimenting with film techniques.

From YT (via right click > translate to English and copy the translated text since the copy/paste/google search function has broke temporarily in the About section as I write this, Google is working on a fix https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/youtube/HU7yQD7Jbk4/_Ts39ZEmmDkJ):

"Lucid Dreams Of Gabriel," an experimental short film created by Disney Research in collaboration with ETH, Zurich, was shot at 120fps/RAW with all effects invented and applied in-house at Disney Research Zurich. We sought to produce a visual effects framework that would support the film's story in a novel way. Our technique, called "The Flow-Of-Time," includes local frame rate variation, local pixel timing and a variety of artistic shutter functions.

Effects include:
•High dynamic range imaging
•Strobe and rainbow shutters•Global and local framerate variations
•Flow motion effects
•Super slow motion
•Temporal video compositing

The following scenes of the teaser, indicated by the timecode, demonstrate different components of our new technology:

Shots with a dark corridor and a window (0:08); a man sitting on a bed (0:16):Our new HDR tone-mapping technique makes use of the full 14 bit native dynamic range of the camera to produce an image featuring details in very dark as well as very bright areas at the same time. While previous approaches have been mostly limited to still photography or resulted in artifacts such as flickering, we present a robust solution for moving pictures.

A hand holding a string of beads (0:14):As we experimented with novel computational shutters, the classic Harris-shutter was extended to make use of the full rainbow spectrum instead of the traditional limitation to just red, green, and blue. For this scene, the input was rate converted using our custom technology, temporally split and colored, then merged back into the final result.

The double swings scene (0:20):Extending on our experiments with computational shutters, this scene shows a variety of new techniques composed into a single shot. Fully facilitating the original footage shot in 120 fps, the boy has been resampled at a higher frame rate (30fps) and a short shutter, resulting an ultra crisp, almost hyper-real appearance, while the woman was drastically resampled at a lower frame rate (6fps) featuring an extreme shutter which is physically not possible and adding a strong motion blur to make her appear more surreal.

Car driving backwards and a flower (0:30); a train (0:36), For these scenes, we were experimenting with extreme computational shutters. The theoretical motion blur for the scenes was extended with a buoyancy component and modified through a physical fluid simulation, resulting in physically impossible motion blur. As shown, it is possible to apply this effect selectively on specific parts of the frame, as well as varying the physical forces.

Super slow motion closeup of the boy (0:44); a handkerchief with motion blur and super slow motion (0:47); an hourglass (0:50):These shots show the classical application of optical flow - slow motion. However, with our new technology we have been able to achieve extremely smooth pictures with virtually no artifacts, equivalent of a shutter speed at 1000 fps. At the same time, artificial motion blur equivalent of a shutter of far more than 360 degrees can be added to achieve a distinct "stroby" look, if desired, while maintaining very fluent motion in all cases. We are also able to speed up or slow down parts of the scene, e.g. to play the background in slow-motion while the foreground runs at normal speed. All of these effects can be applied on a per-pixel basis, thus giving full freedom to the artist.

Additional info on the film:

"Lucid Dreams Of Gabriel" is a surrealistic and non-linear story about a mother achieving immortality through her son, unconditional love, and the fluidity of time.

Producer: Markus Gross
DOP: Marco Barberi
Script & Director: Sasha A. Schriber
Camera & lenses: Arri Alexa XT with Zeiss prime lenses
Original language: English
Length: 11 minutes

Stay tuned for the full short film, project website and press release in early August!