Timelapses/Hyperlapses | art-photography

Time lapses

Timelapses + Hyperlapses

I looked at many timelapses on Youtube and Vimeo, in particular looking at timelapses taken on tripods and also handheld timelapses that are then stabilized to give the effect of a weighted dolly movement, also known as hyperlapses.

I have taken lots of video footage, and then in After Effects I increased the speed of these videos (e.g. from 25 minutes long sped up to 8 seconds long), forming the timelapse. I applied this to most of the video footage. I also took some handheld footage that would require stabilizing, thus creating the 'hyperlapse'.

BACK TO EXAM PROJECT

JOHN EKLUND ARTIST STUDY

GAVIN HEFFERMAN ARTIST STUDY

FINAL PIECE (TIMELAPSE)

Different techniques to make timelapses:

This method requires taking a video of a place over a sustained period of time, and then speeding it up in editing software such as After Effects.

I found this least effective, as it required using up lots of memory to take, for example, 25 frames per second for 1 hour, but then speeding the video up to make it last 10 seconds would then only require 25 frames for each of the 10 seconds, therefore losing lots of frames that were not needed. Also, when trying to capture a change in light of the sky, I found the video recording tried to counteract this change in light by balancing the exposure automatically, and it only recorded in 720p: a much lower resolution to individual photos taken on the same camera. This is one of the timelapse videos I produced using this method:

1. Video Method

I only discovered this method upon purchasing an intervalometer, which I had purchased after having taken most of the time lapses by the video method. The intervalometer is a device that plugs into most DSLRs and cameras, and releases the shutter at set intervals for set exposure times.

This, therefore, takes photos for each frame of the timelapse, rather than every single frame being recorded in real-time as a video would do. I set the camera up facing the sky and set the intervalometer to capture photos every 10 seconds for an exposure less than 1 second. I left this capturing for 30-40 minutes and then uploaded the pictures onto my computer in a separate folder.

In after effects I dragged the folder in, and it created an image sequence, having recognized this was an image sequence automatically. I dragged it into a new composition and, much like a stop-motion animation, the images formed a timelapse:

2. Intervalometer Method

One can compare this to the video used in the video method above, and see that the quality here is significantly better.

3. Hyperlapse Method

The hyperlapse method was for the handheld timelapses. I did not try this with the intervalometer footage, as that was not movement. I tried this with the handheld video footage of driving in a car, seen in my Final Piece.

I imported the unstabilized video into After Effects, sped it up, and then added Warp Stabilizer to it. This smoothed out the shaky parts by warping each frame. Some parts of the video have black edges because to stabilize the video it needed more footage outside the ratio it was filmed in, however in my final piece I did not include these parts. Here is a before and after of the stabilization: