30 Seconds, 30 Days: 3 Ideas for Incredible Time Lapse Photography Projects
by Adam Krell
Like waving a magic wand, the audience sees a kitten grow from small enough to fit in her owner’s palm to large enough she can hardly balance on her shoulder. They see day turn to night and back again, and then they see spring turn to summer, fade to autumn and to winter. Some of the best TV commercial productions and viral videos take advantage of time lapse photography. Whether you’re looking to make an artistic statement or promote an organization or business, time lapse may be the answer.
Before and After
Whatever your cause, before and after might prove an excellent focus for a time lapse project. For example, if you’re blogging about the effects of an intensive workout and diet program, you can stand before a camera in the same outfit and the same pose for every day of the program. The result will be a natural progression of the regimen’s effects. Likewise, you could show a consumer before using your product and after over a shorter period of time, or the results of vowing to grow your hair or beard out to a certain length.
Your Day
Have a time lapse photography crew follow you around for a typical work day or a day working toward a project you’d like to publicize. The crew will capture moments throughout the day at your home or office. When the video is cut together, every few minutes is just a second on screen, so it appears like you’re floating non-stop to tackle everything on your plate. This is also a quirky way to introduce consumers to your business if you’re not promoting a product or service in particular.
Land and Cityscapes
Focus on a landscape or cityscape with special significance to you and film the area in a time lapse project. You can show how the area changes from day to night, focus on the traffic that passes all day long on the streets, or present wildlife that makes its way through the countryside. With a long-term project, you could show the natural progression of seasons, or if you’re focusing on a specific event that takes place outdoors in your industry, your video could show the area before set up begins, during set up, during the event and during take-down.
You could also film multiple areas and cobble them together with a single connecting element. Travel and landscape videos play to large numbers; Softpedia reported one around-the-world time lapse video scored over 1.3 million videos.
When done right, time lapse seems to have taken very little effort at all, but it’s actually one of the most time-consuming types of video projects, and it can be difficult for the amateur to pull off. Contact a professional video production company with experience producing time lapse videos, or your project may wind up with awkward jump cuts as subjects move across the screen in ways you didn’t intend. The time lapse effect is one of the closest things we have to magic — just look at your video camera as the magic wand.
To get a time-lapsed video shot for your next production, contact Aurora Coast today.
