Yet again, I had to resort to Plan B! The first idea was to shoot a dream style movie around an old 12th C Priory that we stayed in for a weekend. I got some stunning shots, but it turned out I really struggled to weave the story into the footage I had. So. Onto plan B ;-)

I have been checking out the videos and techniques of a guy who goes by the name of MiLapse - http://www.youtube.com/user/milapse - in fact a lot of credit for my video needs to go to this guy! He uses a motorised telescope head with an SLR mount to capture HDR motion timelapses. This is something I have always loved, so a week later I ordered a Meade tripod,head and controller from a stateside store for the incredible price of $160 inc shipping!!!! It turned up last week, and settled by plan B idea ;-)
So what to shoot? I sat down and scribbled a list of places and things where I thought there would be adequate movement over a period of time. That was the easy bit. Getting to these places, you need to sit down and watch, time and measure the stuff you're about to shoot, so you can figure out how long you need to roll for, the angle of movement on the tripod and most importantly the speed of movement - too fast or too slow and you miss your action. It was my first go at all this, so I think about half my footage( 6 of 12 hours ) didn't get used!! It's a wonderful technique to mess about with, especially when you speed it back and it show you patterns and layers that you just don't see in realtime. It does however require the patience of a saint and the ability to fight off the urge to whip the tripod round cause "something really interesting is happening over there" ;-). Something I'll be playing with a lot more in future!!!

Shot on a Sony HVR-A1 - edited HD in PP2
HD version is available here ( right click save as please!) http://www.treborsnave.com/video/tempusfugit.wmv but be warned, it is 173 mb!!!!

Enjoy!!!!

I LOVE!!!!

this is cool,I realy enjoyed this film, adventure of the day...
nice work.

Some times it feelt like "jumped", but the pans that just kept going to picture to picture (tainstation etc.) was so cool.

/Markus

Rob that was outstanding...
I particularly liked the birds on the river about 50 seconds in....

I'm not sure how it relates to the theme, but I really did enjoy it.

Bob T.

This is one of the more esoteric takes on the theme. I think it worked though, partly because time lapse just captivates me. I love the way people seem to be moving as if magnets are placed under their feet dragging them around.

Fascinating, and on a budget,too. I love it. You might consider slowing things down to real time periodically, just to give the viewers' eyes a rest.
And it's not hard to see how this piece relates to ADVENTURE. You had the car and driver going down the wrong side of the street!

Rob, that was an exceptional film, wow!
Some will maybe say that you was overusing the timelaps in this film, but I think that your subjects was different from sequence to sequence so my attention was kept all the way through your film!
I have a plan of doing some timelaps this year of my own. I have to study the concept you have used here!

Thanks for doing this Rob!

Rob,

Wow, what a film! That shot of the goose flying towards the camera and the sunrise following it were the stuff magic is made of.

Good choice of music and a lot of variety to keep the timelapses fresh.

I love both slow motion as well as timelapse work.
I wonder if that mount would support a HVX200 with a mattebox?

Awesome stuff!!

Oh yes Rob...I admire the ideas that everyone comes up with in these challenges.Everyone pushes the envelope just that bit farther with every challenge.great stuff...I have to learn to do this...amazing!

i love the little stuffed animals and the soccer legs and the shots of the crane against the sky.

this stuff is amazing. i'm still not sure that i understand how you did it. i need a tutorial, because this is uber-cool, and i can imagine lots of applications...

Wow Rob! I'd say plan B was really the plan A all along. Fascinating and captivating. Very well done from beginning to end.

Cat

Hey Rob,

If this was only your plan B, I'd love to see your plan A. Because this was outstanding!
Too much timelapse can be a little boring, but you kept coming up with new things all the time, and it worked perfectly!
I am impressed.

One suggestion:
I think the sunrise could have been a nice opening of your film.

Keep up the good work!

Rob,

I really liked your entry, I have it in my top 4 so far.

It kind of reflects our busy bee life styles, everyone zooming around.

Made me think the planet must look crazy to something that operates at a slower pace!! It made me think!!!

I liked the moving car shots!!!

Thanks for the feedback all - I wasn't quite sure how it would go down with everyone - esoteric is a great word for it (thanks Adrinn) but i'm really glad you're all enjoying it. All of your points are valid, and I'll take the ideas on in future shoots - thanks!

Meryem - if you look this Milapse guy up on youtube all the tutorials are there, including the link for the place to buy it (erm I have no commercial links there LOL). The toys were my favourite too, felt like a bit of a nod to Sony's "colours" ad recently with all the play-doh rabbits jumping around in timelapse ( did you guys get that over there??? )

Kevin - Yeah, i should think it should handle the weight, I had an fx1 with large battery pack and a century WA and it was fine - it's designed for pretty large telescopes.....

Now, rotting banana timelapse anyone??? ;-)

Rob,

A nice variation on conventional filming technique with the use of timelaspe.

I have done a few timelapse sequences using my Canon 20D DSR with an intervlometer and imported the pictures as individual frames into final cut pro. But the movement you've added through each sequence definitely adds a dimension to it.

Mihali

Rob, wow. That was great. I have tried for years to get that effect and never got it as perfect as yours was. Great cam work and editing. Bob

Absolutely awesome!
Only one little comment at 00.24, two similar gras clips after another made a little jump cut, but this is a minor detail.
Very good film Rob, I liked it very much and it also reminds me of some of the films they've been showing on Animal Planet.

All the best
Geir Inge

Hi Rob,

That was just great watching something so different!

Like Kevin, I really loved the shot of the goose flying by and the sun rise. The effects are wonderful, although it does sound like you have to really work hard for them. Then again, you seem to have achieved such a wonderful result in such a short time.

I guess the adventure was the whole experiment of shooting in such a unique way. Top class entry as always.

Rob,

I did some research on this whole Milapse and HDR timelapse thing, very interesting.
I see most of the stuff I found was done with DSLR cameras and they used exposure bracketing....

But what about you. I see you used a video camera, not a DSLR....
Were you shooting moving video? Or stills? I'm not familiar with your camera, so I don't know all your options.

I guess I'm looking for a little more info on your process...and maybe a picture of your set up....with the telescope tripod.

As I said before...loved your video.

Bob T.

Rob,

Wow. I'm now very glad that I didn't go with my plan A, which was much less interesting timelapses. ;)

I really enjoyed it, the pans are really what sold me. Though the duck coming out of nowhere was by far my favorite shot.

As far as the music, towards the beginning it provided excitement, and then slowly relaxed towards the end, good pacing for this project. The soccer(football?) seemed out of place to me, like the music had already told me it was bedtime... But that's probably just me. :D

C

once again, many thanks for the feedback - Geir I hadn't spotted that one, kudos to your eagle eyes ;-)

Bob, s'funny you should mention the photo idea, I was at one point planning to film a timelapse of the tripod in action ;-) but I didn't quite get round to it.
I'll try and get some done in the next few days.

But here's a quick run-down.

Getting and setting!

Order the "milapse" telescope ( think $90) up from www.telescope-warehouse.com - it basically arrives minus bracket for telescope use. All you need to do is get a bracket made at a metal shop, which will fit the 4 screws in the tripod head and have a 90 bend, and a screw hole to fit the camcorder secure screw. In my case, I managed to "acquire" a metal bookend from my kitchen ( which will no doubt catch up with me at some point ;-) and drilled it myself. The tripod has i think 100 +deg vertical movement and 360 continual horizontal - so make sure you secure the plate so it is horizontal at the middle of the vertical range. Secure your camcorder ( in my case the hvr-a1 is a small form HDV camera) and get ready to shoot.

Using in the field.

Add 8 aa batteries and start the machine up. When it has started, wait 10s and push the speed key. It will display a speed, which starts at 2deg/sec then goes all the way down to 2x in incements as you push the speed button, which i think is something like 360deg in 24 hrs ( but don't take my word on this - there are about 8 speed levels in total ). Get the tripod as even as possible - it doesnt have a spirit level and frankly the tripod is of poor quality contstruction, but what the hey! Now, with it set to the fastest speed, pan across your intended shot by using the d-pad arrows ( left, right, up, down ) to make sure there's noting odd in the way and all angles are well framed. In my case I set the focus on the cam to manual - infinity and left the exposure on auto to handle the changing light areas - you may want to play around here. Now, sit for a few minutes without filming and watch your scene - how much action do you have going on? which direction is it moving? Is something going to happen at one point that you want to make sure is captured? Use this information to decide what speed to run at, and what angle to capture. It's take you a bit of experimentation to get this right, but most of these sequences were captured at 16X or 32X. Also at this stage think about how the movement will work between adjacent scenes in the edit - will a diagonal work here against a diagonal in another shot? will it slide into another shot travelling in the same direction? Obviously, choose a spot that will not put you or others around you in the way of any harm!
Movement is sustained by a very simple technique - a bulldog clip, like the ones use for holding files together. Using this you can clamp down 1 or two buttons at a time ( 1 for v/h 2 for diagonal ) to keep the head moving.
Once you've decided on your scene, roll the camera at normal speed ( and hope you bought a lot of tapes!! - unless you have interval record, try playing with it! ), and keep an eye on it. Resist the urge to swing the whole rig round because something is happening 180deg from the lens ( unless of course it's something like a UFO ;-) - just let it roll and commit yourself to waiting. Generally people will start talking to you because you look like a freak stood on a corner with an army surplus rocket launcher - but you get used to it....

Back in the edit

This is the dull bit. Capture the hours of footage you have filmed ( unless of course, you have a camera with interval record which will do X frames over X seconds, which my old TrV900 has but doesnt appear to be on the hvr a1!) then import it into your timeline - then crush it down to a speed that works.
Then stick it on the web so we can all see it.

Cheers!

Rob

Thank you Rob for that excellent explaination....

You've given me something new to try....very nice!

Bob T.

My word - time certainly flies by in this movie Rob - a very apt title!

I found your results of this time-lapse technique fascinating - thank you for showing us how it works and what you are capable of achieving with it. And thanks for all the info on how to do it - I really appreciate that. This is the sort of thing I would love to play with given the time and the equipment. I think one could use some of the resulting special effects to great effect in a movie.

I like the two birds ‘skating’ across the water in your intro - really nice - and the sun rising fast is amazing. I particularly enjoyed the views looking upwards and the crowds of people flowing towards you. I must say I also like the idea of having a really smooth pan - I really battle with that. Your music is very appropriate for this compilation.

Most enjoyable movie and a very worthwhile gizmo I would say.

Hey Rob

Well you certainly have given uwol something different with this piece. Its facinating to watch the world in a whole new way and the use of that panning head certainly adds to this even more. While I certainly felt like I went on a journey I'm not sure I got adventure from the piece but that said there is just so much down to interpretation in all our films who's to say. All the timelapsing was great and well shot although I have to say by the end it did start to feel like a demo of the technique itself over a film with a premise.

Creative use of an interesting technology fella. I may well have to have a look at the head myself for the film I'm making this year, it would certainly add another dimension.

Great stuff

I'm gonna have to learn how to pan so slow you can't even feel the rig moving. That footage was great. Nice work

Its fantastic, except for the fact that you are making me want one of those :)

I really enjoyed this, and thanks for all the behind the scenes information, I'd like to try some of those techniques. It's great when photography and video can show us ways to see the world our own eyes can't capture. You really found a very beautiful and graceful way of editing the material, too- the gliding birds and people were magical. Thanks for sharing this, and I look forward to trying out some of those techniques- I have so far only played a bit with this, but I found your film very inspirational. Great job!

Ruth

Beautiful imagery and a smooth sensation of time gliding by quickly. Very well and powerfully done.

love this- and very interesting seeing some of the stuff MIlapse has been using. love timelapse and really want to start doing more: thanks for the inspiration!
Sandy

Very impressive to show the whole thing in time lapse without leaving the viewer feeling there is too much of it!

A couple of questions out of pure curiosity:
1) How many subjects did you actually shoot, and how many were not suitable for this treatment (note, I said subjects, not takes)?

2) By how much did you speed up the clips - all the same or did it vary on each clip?

Very impressive to show the whole thing in time lapse without leaving the viewer feeling there is too much of it!

A couple of questions out of pure curiosity:
1) How many subjects did you actually shoot, and how many were not suitable for this treatment (note, I said subjects, not takes)?

2) By how much did you speed up the clips - all the same or did it vary on each clip?

Hi Annie, glad you liked it. Would be amazing to get out and do some timlapse like this out on the beaches in pembrokeshire, the tides, clouds and space would make for some amazing shots.

to answer your questions:
1. There were two locations that i didn't use completely, the first was a closeup of a car window covered with frost, melting in the sun - looked ok but didnt quite fit in - likewise a shot of the sun coming up over a hedge at the side of a field, with the shadows gradually shortening and the iced grass turning from white to green. I had probabably another 5 hours of footage that was captured in the same locations as the footage i ended up using, but they didn't neccesarily have the same impact - it can sometimes be a very hit and miss process. The one shot that disappointed me the most was the shot of the frozen grass early on - I left it running for about 25 minutes on the slowest pan setting, and it hardly even melted. It was only later when the sun was at a higer latitude hitting grass that had already been in the shade that I realised the way it should be done!!

2. Anything between 300% and 6,000% i think - bascially what looked good in the time i had alloted for each scene in the edit.

Cheers!

Should I ever find time, I'll try it out. If you get the chance to come this way and try it, let me know and I'd love to join you and learn directly how it is done.

Liked your film very much. It's always interesting to watch time lapse, and you did this beautifully. Excellent film

Hi Rob,
What a cool film. I loved what you put together with all those timelapse shots, so much so, that i just layed down the cash for a set up to do the same myself.

Bryce

Hi Rob,
What a cool film. I loved what you put together with all those timelapse shots, so much so, that i just layed down the cash for a set up to do the same myself.

Bryce

That's really cool Bryce - let me know how you get on with it!!!

Hi Rob,
Just a quick question regarding the tripod & controller set up you bought, did you have any trouble getting on to the guys where you ordered it? I have been trying to get a hold of them for the last week with no response. I would love to order the same setup as you have, but can't simply order it online so must send them an email to get shipping etc sorted out. So far i have sent 2 emails, but had nothing back. Just wondering if your dealings with them were the same, & maybe i just need to be a bit more patient.

Thanks,

Bryce

Hey Bryce,
Yeah, there was a bit of a delay getting hold of him, they'd been away on holiday for a while. The alternative is finding out if there are any meade distributors in Oz, and seeing if you can find one that'll ship you the unit of its own - maybe worth a shot....

Cheers!

Rob

Thanks for the tip Rob, i will give it a go. Bit of a bummer if i can't get a hold of one, i had a pretty cool idea for this round, still, there's always plan B!

Bryce