So I have been researching how to do timelapse photography for some time now. I have written out and figured out the exact settings for my camera, and how to assemble it in post production. The only thing left to do was make time and go do it. I just kept putting it off, though, even though it was something I really wanted to do. I felt like I needed to make my first timelapse absolutely epic and mindblowing. Then one night at 2 am, in the midst of a storm, I realized that my first time doing something isn't always going to be perfect or turn out amazing.
As my screenwriting teacher once taught me, "the genius comes with time."
You don't get that great shot unless you practice getting a bunch of okay shots before the one. So that stormy night, I decided to shoot my first timelapse. While my roommate Kevin slept on the couch in our living room, I set my camera up on a tripod, placed it on the front porch just barely out of the pouring rain, set the camera to take one shot every 5 seconds and waited. It was short, maybe only 30 minutes in total, but a timelapse none the less. After I shot it, I threw the 400 or so pictures onto my computer and used Quicktime player 7 to turn them into a 1080p HD movie at 24 frames per second.
Being that it was my frist time, I made some pretty bad errors. I put the video in the wrong resolution, which caused the video to stretch out and look all fat. I also did not take advantage of the high quality picture resolution I got from my camera. A timelapse is always a nicer quality image than an HD video because it is made of stills, which are always better looking than video frames. (If this is hard to understand, pause a video and compare it to a picture you took with your point and shoot camera or iPhone or something. The iPhone pic will look way nicer because it is such a higher resolution) So yea, the timelapse is not great, but that's why it was my first one. It doesn't have to be good, but it is a stepping stone in which I learned a lot.
There are some things that I do like about my first timelapse. I like how you can see the red taillights from passing cars flash across the screen. I like that you can tell when there is an occasional flash of lighting. I also like that it is of good ol 8th street and what I experience everyday looking out onto it. Here is the finished product:
Feeling a bit more confident I took my shot (pun intended) at another timelapse. This one is for a behind the scenes video documentary I shot for a short film competition I helped crew (I was lighting supervisor woo hoo). I thought it would be cool to show our whole crew unloading all the equipment out of beautiful Elsie (my car). I avoided some of the mistakes I made the first time around, changed up the settings for the situation, added a little pan in final cut pro and I am pretty pleased with the results. Check it out here:
Next up, star timelapse. Epicness probable.
