Charles Austin Miller

Corrected entry: In the scene where the Terminator shoots at the police with a revolving barrelled gun from a floor of the Cyberdyne building if you look closely you would see that the ammunition strip containing the bullets does not move. This is unusual considering spent shells were raining down from the gun. At least the strip should flip about a bit.

Correction: The revolving barrelled "mini-gun" has an ammunition supplied as correctly stated by a belt but it is housed in a flexible outer casing. The belt moves at such high speed due to the weapons massive rate of fire it needs this outer case to ensure a reliable supply of the belted ammunition, as exposed ammunition moving at such high speed could pose a danger to the operator and would easily be snagged against cover or other obstacles.

Correction: One possible reason why no movement would be visible could be the framerate at which the scene was recorded. Each time a frame was taken, the bullets also had moved down. A similar effect happens with helicopters that are being filmed, the rotors appear frozen while in reality, they obviously rotate around.

The effect you describe does not occur on film, but only in video. Film uses a much slower capture rate, while video uses a much faster capture rate, producing odd optical effects in video that do not appear in film.

Charles Austin Miller

This is not correct. The effect is called the wagon wheel effect and can be seen in countless old westerns. A higher frame rate is actually less likely to produce the effect.

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