Time-lapses

A time-lapse is a technique where the frequency at which film frames are captured is much lower than that used to view the sequence. When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. For my nature photography class we learned a little about time-lapses and how to capture them. I had previously learned how to work a time-lapse, so I helped my group learn the ropes. For our two videos we went to a local park near our school. Each video took ten minutes to capture, leaning into the time-lapses only being ten seconds once they were finished. But, we didn’t like how fast our time-lapses ended up to be within those ten seconds so we slowed them down for a better viewing.

In the video you will see for our first video we had placed the camera in front of some weeds and focused on them, blurring the background a little. As you watch, you will see people who are passing by and the weeds blowing from the wind. In the second one we recorded a berry branch swaying in the wind. You will see when the wind becomes harsher verses when it’s calmer. What’s great about working with time-lapses is that they don’t take too long to edit together. Once all the images have been captured and entered into Lightroom, we edit them to our liking, syncing all the images together so all the edits are the same. Once we have edited everything we open Premiere Pro. There is when we simply import the image sequence and Premiere does the rest of the work for us, putting all the images together in a film sequence. Then, we put the finishing touches on our video – slowing it down, adding fading in and out effects, and of course, adding some music. I hope you enjoy our little project and maybe consider trying it on your own!

You can also check out another time-lapse I created for my film project “Horse & Rider: Unbreakable.” Check out my blog for the project and you will be able to view the time-lapse and my final video!