Hyperlapse Project
While lockdown continues my filming opportunities have been severely limited, I am really grateful to my flatmates for their interest and willingness to get involved with my projects.
What is Hyperlapse?
Simply, it is similar to a time lapse, where a series of still shots are taken over a period of time for example, one photo every second and edited together to make a video. The camera is usually fixed and mounted on a tripod so that the scenes framing shot remains the same but the time recorded changes (of course anything that happens in the scene is recorded so it a changing scene but the framing stays the same). Now with Hyperlapse the camera position isn’t fixed this moves as well. This can be a short distance using a small motorised dolly or gimbal but it can also be over a much longer distance giving the feel of rapid travel between two or more points.
dji OSMO mobile ready for hyperlapse
The setup for filming a hyperlapse using a dji osmo gimbal is relatively straight forward but hard to explain so I’ve added in the dji osmo tutorial video below for you to follow if you want to follow and duplicate my project yourself. But basically you go through the setup and calibration for normal filming (don’t forget to setup the horizon feature) and when it comes time to shoot pick horizontal or vertical mode make sure you select time lapse mode and away you go. A cautionary note it’s not that simple because you still need to practice your movements to keep the footage smooth and steady, the gimbal can only smooth the footage so much. Also in my test shoots I had to master the technique of walking while filming backwards. Another cautionary note the frame rate in hyperlapse is not fixed so your editing software needs to be able to cope with variable frame rates otherwise you will see juddering or not so obvious dropped frames. I use Premiere Pro and that seems to have no difficulty coping with vfr.
The Hyperlapse project.
The aim of this project is to explore space and time. What I am trying to show is empty space and movement through it. During lockdown public space emptied of people particularly on campus. My aim is to not just show empty space but the memory of people using this space. I plan to overlay images of people fading from view revealing the empty spaces. I’ve already filmed some of the spaces on campus in real time and using hyperlapse and now I am experimenting with filming people in slo motion and using hyperlapse to see which of the filming techniques work best with my empty spaces footage.
Experimental test 2
Why 2 first? well the first few shoots didn’t go as planned but with practice the results got better. Production notes. The film was shot entirely on my iPhone 8 Plus, which, realistically is too big for the gimbal but even though it struggles with the size and weight it does work well enough. I filmed in both landscape and vertical mode but because of the filming location (again restricted by lockdown) was very narrow and so vertical mode seemed the most appropriate. In keeping with the mobile theme I also edited the footage on my iPad Pro, fortunately the hyperlapse is taken care of in the iPhone so its just a case of trimming the footage and adding music and a simple effect. For example, I added a mirror effect at the end.
Experimental 1 – no speed reduction landscape mode.
dji Tutorial