Update 6 - Finished Video

Today I have finished my time-lapse project. overall I am happy with the video I have produced although I believe it needs a wider variety of shots overall. I feel that the music track I have chosen fits the piece well I have chosen this royalty free track found on YouTube that is below.



This project overall has been a good one as i have had to manage my time and work out how many photos I need to capture to complete a particular shot.

One issue i encountered during the making of this video was that I had accidentally changed the camera still image setting to RAW this lead to problems in post production as Adobe Premiere cannot read them natively which meant I had to use Adobe after effects to get them to work in premiere as i did not have the time to convert them all to JPEG images.

Here is the finished video.






Here is the Adobe Premiere window of the final completed project.

Update 5 - Infrared!

Today I started editing my time-lapse video. While editing it was suggested I do an infrared effect on the some of the shots. I followed the tutorial below of Dave's to learn how to create the effect. And I then did the same but in after effects instead of photoshop/



I am only using this effect on a couple of the shots and actually only on the sky section and i will mask the sky so the effect only affects that area within the video.

Later on I was looking on Vimeo to see if their has been any infrared tim-lapses created and found this one by Philip Bloom a former Sky News cameraman who is now an independent filmmaker.

IR TIMELAPSE TEST from Philip Bloom extras on Vimeo.

This was shot on a Canon 5d mark 3 which has been specially adapted to shoot infrared.

While looking at this particular video I found a teaser for another timelapse he has done although the final version is not released at the time of writing.

Conversations from the 35th floor from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

I like the tilt-shift effect used at the beginning of this video and would have liked to try something similar. This would require a tilt shift lens which are not cheap. Although I have seen ways to fake this effect I don't personally feel that they give a good enough result.

Below is the After Effects composition for the final shot of the video. Showing the masks and multiple layers used.

Here is a short preview video of the final shot at the moment there is some flicker in the clip which I am working on fixing.



I have found this tutorial to try fixing flicker as the brightness change only affects one frame at a time so this may work. I am going try it when I get chance.

Die flicker! Die! How to remove that nasty high shutter speed/ high frame rate artefact in your NLE. from Philip Bloom Reviews & Tutorials on Vimeo.

Timelapse Project Update 4 - Shooting

Today I have started shooting my video.

I have found that using Magic Lantern to activate the shutter is working well. One problem I have encountered is the length of time to shoot a shot as to get something effective it takes a while. I also have to work out the amount of pictures I need to take as this affects the length of the shot. For example if i wanted a 10 second shot I would need to take 250 shots to make up enough video frames for a video at 25 frames per second.

I have shot the initial shots at home and then the rest of them I will probably shoot at Avenham park in Preston and other locations in the Preston area.

Timelapse Project Update 3 - Research

I have spent some time on Vimeo and YouTube looking for ideas for my project and have found a few ideas that I like.

London time-lapse (2013) from BeHere too on Vimeo.

This video London time-lapse  (2013) I like because of the hyper-lapse technique used. This technique may be difficult to replicate as it takes careful planning as you need to get the distances between the camera positions correct if not it doesn't look convincing. Although I would like to try something like this I don't think I could make it work effectively so I have decided to not try this.

Mirror City Timelapse from Michael Shainblum on Vimeo.
Another video I saw was Mirror city by Michael Shainblum. The way he uses the lights of the city along with mirroring techniques while editing make this time-lapse unique. I would like to try this although it would require working when its dark which is a problem as it is getting closer to summer and it is getting darker later.

Overall i think i am going to take some inspiration from these videos but I will look for other interesting time-lapse videos to find some more ideas.

Planning - Choosing Equipment

One consideration I have to make for this project is the equipment.
In choosing the equipment I have 2 major options.

Firstly I could use a video camera and record for a few hours although this will take up a lot of storage space. Then in post you would have to speed it up to get the time-lapse effect.
Secondly I could use an digital SLR to take high resolution still images and then use a combination of Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premier to form the video.

I chose to use a Canon 600d slr to shoot the project. I chose this as I own one and it produces high resolution stills.

One issue with this is that I need an Intervalometer controller to activate the shutter at the desired interval. For this I have 3 options.
The first of these is to use a laptop and the EOS utility software that came with the camera. The downside to this is that i need a laptop with me which may not be the most practical setup as it requires me to carry a laptop about and the laptop battery may not last long enough.
The second option to this is to buy a dedicated intervalometer controller. The downside to this is that it requires me to pay for it.
The third option which i chose is to use magic lantern which is an open source hack for the camera which adds time-lapse features for the camera. I chose this as it was free, easy to use and easy to install on the camera.

The Beginning - Initial Ideas

For my final major project I have decided to create a time-lapse video. I have decided to do this as it is something I am interested and have wanted to try shooting but have never had the chance to.

This project is going to take a few months to shoot as time-lapse takes a few hours of real life 'action' such as clouds moving or crowds of people moving and condenses it into seconds.