technique · 1 recipe
Slit-Scan
Time is sampled along a narrow image strip and laid along an axis, creating structured streaked geometry.
Selected recipe
Slit-Scan
This is the default recipe for the Slit-Scan Time Mapping family.
Free short AI video prompt
A starter line you can copy. The full timed recipe, still-image and production prompts are on the shot card.
Prompt rule: Define slit position, width and time-to-space ordering; accumulate actual sequential samples with enough pre-roll history.
Slit-Scan: Time is sampled along a narrow image strip and laid along an axis, creating structured streaked geometry. Keep the subject readable; motivate camera and light.
Technique guide
- When to use
- Reach for Slit-Scan when you need this effect: Time is sampled along a narrow image strip and laid along an axis, creating structured streaked geometry.
- How it works
- Define slit position, width and time-to-space ordering; accumulate actual sequential samples with enough pre-roll history.
- Common mistakes
- If the result does not follow this rule, it is not this technique: Define slit position, width and time-to-space ordering; accumulate actual sequential samples with enough pre-roll history. Do not change multiple variables at once so the effect becomes unreadable.
How to read this page
Slit-Scan is one technique in Optical Effects. The definition states the single mechanism the frame has to show. The technique guide covers when to use it, the steps, the usual mistakes, how it differs from the neighbors, and what a successful take looks like.
The clip above is one reading, made with a third-party video model. Another model, or the same model on another day, can land on a different frame. It is an example, not a promise that a prompt will match it.
The free short prompt is a starter sentence. The shot card is the timed recipe: scene, start and end frames, action, light, and color. Three sample cards are free on the site. The rest are part of GrokCine Pro. A second name for the same shot keeps its own URL and points back at this definition.
When you write a prompt, keep the one mechanism in the definition, then name the subject, the motion, and why the light is there. Do not stack a neighboring technique into the same sentence. If the name or the example is wrong, send this page's URL from the contact page.
Recipe
8 seconds · single take
A 1969 science-fiction film, the pilot's point of view inside the anomaly: the rotating striped signal disc of a derelict relay station is smeared, slit by slit, into a mirrored corridor of time ribbons.
Shot cards
The full recipe for Slit-Scan is a shot card
The full recipe for Slit-Scan is a shot card. The start and end frames, timed action, lighting and color specs, a camera parameter table, copy-ready still-image and video prompts and negatives are open to GrokCine Pro members on the web.
Related families
- Lens Flare
Lens FlareStray light inside the imaging optics creates source-dependent ghosts or veiling glare that changes when the source is blocked. - Double Exposure
Double ExposureTwo image records coexist within the same frame through a controlled blend, instead of trading places as a transition. - Split Screen
Split ScreenTwo separately photographed or generated image fields are visible at the same time within one composed frame.
More in Optical Effects
References
Sources we studied for this technique. External links; we don't embed them.
Articles & definitions
- Wikipedia: Slit-scan photography
Wikipedia · Web
Slit-scan exposes the image through a moving slit, stretching time across space; used for the 2001 Stargate.
Videos
- 2001: A Space Odyssey: slit-scan Stargate
@StanleyKubrick · 2025-04-02 · X
The 2001: A Space Odyssey Stargate sequence, made by Douglas Trumbull with slit-scan.
Images & stills
- How Trumbull shot the 2001 Stargate
@rejectnation · 2022-12-03 · X
How Trumbull built the slit-scan machine for 2001.