New York in time-lapse — a teaser

March 14, 2013

Another time-lapse film by Samuel Orr, this one on a city, “New York Day.”

I said it is a teaser.  Orr wants to do a longer film, but needs some financial backing to get it done.

Details here:

Please go to the Kickstarter project page and help support a longer version of this short film

kickstarter.com/projects/motionkicker/new-york-year

I shot this film over 4 trips to NYC 2011-2012. The time-lapse sequences you see here were made (mostly) from hundreds of thousands of still images. A Canon 7D and T3i were the main cameras, with backup from a couple of older Nikon Coolpix 5000 point and shooters. A few clips are sped-up video.

Many thanks to the generosity of the musician/composer who allowed his great celtic track “Sawjig” to be used;
Ben Rusch aka Jasmine Brunch
benrusch.com
jasminebrunch.com

For more info on this and other projects;
motionkicker.com
twitter.com/motionkicker

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Brilliant film: A Forest Year, from Motionkicker

March 14, 2013

Cousin Amanda Holland called my attention to this on Facebook.  Time lapse photography and a forest — heavenly to me.

More details from Motionkicker,  Samuel Orr:

help support my new time-lapse project at kickstarter!
kickstarter.com/projects/motionkicker/new-york-year

A Forest Year was made from 40,000 still images taken from my front window over 15 months, and were blended into the film.

Find out more about how it was made at motionkicker.com

Special thanks to Johnny_RIpper for letting me use his music.
soundcloud.com/johnny_ripper

Tip of the old scrub brush to Amanda Holland and the National Forest Foundation.

More:


Nightfall, video essay on Los Angeles

September 26, 2012

You wondered how anyone could ever fall in love with the modern megalopolis that is Los Angeles?

Along comes Colin Rich with this video ode, visual poetry to an essential chunk of America.  Oh, yeah, it’s got lots of time-lapse. Notice how the photography turns simple airplanes into something akin to shooting stars, and notice how even an ugly old radio tower crowded with microwave and digital communication antennae turn into things of grace, if not beauty:

More information from Colin Rich:

Music: M83, “Echoes of Mine” off of ‘Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.’ Available from Mute Records, EMI Music
Download the song/album here here: itunes.apple.com/us/album/midnight-city

Cinematography, Direction, and Editing by: Colin Rich: facebook.com/colinrich1
Produced by Pacific Star Productions pacstarpro.com

A big thanks to Matthews MSE (msegrip.com) especially to Bob Kulesh, Tyler & Ed Phillips for their generous support and patience of this lengthy endeavor. Most of the linear motion control shots were captured using their FloatCam DC Slider, a wonderful piece of engineering for the time lapse world.

‘Nightfall’ is a three minute tour of light through the City of Angels.

I shot “Nightfall” in an attempt to capture Los Angeles as it transitioned from day to night. As you probably know, LA is an expansive city so shooting it from many different angles was critical. Usually I was able to capture just one shot per day with a lot of driving, exploring, and scouting in between but the times sitting in traffic or a “sketchy” neighborhood often lead to new adventures and interesting places.

Nightfall in particular is my favorite time to shoot time lapse. Capturing the transition from day to night while looking back at the city as the purple shadow of Earth envelopes the eastern skyline and the warm distant twinkling halogen lights spark to life and give the fading sun a run for her money- this will never grow old or boring to me.

In this piece, it was important to me for the shots to both capture and accentuate the movement of light through the day and night and the use of multiple motion control techniques allowed me to do so.

I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

An English translation of the lyrics-

“It is late. I am looking for my other home, taking an unfamiliar path: a small trail near the factories and the city, cutting through the forest. I can barely see nature when suddenly, night falls. I am engulfed by a world of silence, yet I am not afraid. I fall asleep for a few minutes at the most, and when I wake up, the sun is there and the forest is shining with a bright light.

I recognize this forest. It is not an ordinary forest, it is a forest of memories. My memories. The white and noisy river, my adolescence. The tall trees, the men I have loved. The birds in flight, and in the distance, my lost father.

My memories aren’t memories anymore. They are there, with me, dancing and embracing, singing and smiling at me.

I look at my hands. I caress my face, and I am 20 years old. And I love like I have never loved before.”

Surely this film can be used, at least for a bell ringer or warmup, in geography classes.


Time lapse flight, San Francisco to Paris

January 23, 2012

I continue to like time-lapse photo compilations, and I continue to wonder about how to use them to expand geography teaching.  It’s a great circle route, over the Arctic nearing the North Pole.  This movie comes from Nate Bolt, who posts his work at Beepshow.

Obviously I’m not the only one who likes it — between the YouTube and Vimeo sites, the movie has more than 4 million viewers.

Bolt explained at YouTube:

More of these time lapses at http://beepshow.com

I shot a photo roughly every two miles between take-off in San Francisco and landing in Paris CDG to make this airplane time lapse. For some reason the Vimeo version of this is more linked to: http://vimeo.com/21822029

Shot with a 5d2, a time-lapse controller, and a 16mm – 35mm, mixed with some iPhone shots. The flight path from SF to Paris goes well over greenland and the arctic circle, where you can see “northern” lights from all sides of the plane, which explains why I could shoot them facing South.

Big thanks to the folks at http://uxlondon.com for inviting me to europe to speak – if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have made the trip. The music is a modified template of “Gain” used with permission from DETUNE ltd. denkitribe http://soundcloud.com/denkitribe/gain – I created this arrangement on the Korg iMS20 iPad App, and it’s my first custom score. Edits and pans in After Effects CS5 and iMovie.

The photos during take-off and landing are all computer models and totally rendered because I would never use an electronic device during times when the FAA prohibits them. I did get lucky and have a whole row to myself to setup the tripod and gear.

Thanks to my neighbors for not minding an SLR click every 2 to 30 seconds for 11 hours, and thanks to the whole Air France flight crew for being insanely friendly and allowing me to shoot. Thanks to @ztaylor for showing me the Korg iMS20 iPad App. Thanks to @jayzombie and the #nerdbird on the way to SXSW this year for helping me come up with the idea. Thanks to @somnabulent for the idea of live scoring. Thanks to you for actually reading this far. You are a champion.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Boys’ Life Heads Up blog.