( 01 Idea and style frames )
The film starts from one question: how do you show a speed the eye cannot catch? The answer is the photo-finish camera of athletics, a fixed slit that records whatever crosses the line. I generated a nine-frame storyboard with AI to set the story before any 3D: the line, the knit and the foam in macro, the crossing, the stretched shoe, the finish photo.
( 02 Slit-scan )
The stripes are not a filter. The shoe, a 3D model created in Tripo AI, flies past a fixed camera in Blender, and a script rebuilds each frame of the film: every column of the image shows an earlier moment of the flight. The toe stays sharp on the line and the rest of the shoe stretches behind it. The blocking tested the nine shots and the timing first.
( 03 Cut, grade and sound )
The light is one thin blade that only shows on what it touches. The film is calm until the shoe meets the line, then a burst of three cuts, the long crossing and a negative flash before the last shot, where the shoe turns to the camera, the blur clears and the light opens. The cut, grade and sound were finished in DaVinci Resolve, with custom DCTL hits, sound effects and music written to the cut.
