Wednesday 29 August 2012

Become the Ultimate Master of Time

Summary: spelling and punctuation


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Welcome to your crash course on the art of time-lapse videography. Making a video of ordinary things moving at warped speeds seems like a pretty straightforward procedure at first, but there are a multitude of small tweaks and equipment choices that you can experiment with in order to make a beautiful-looking video of life flashing before your eyes.

??This how-to was written by [http://oprahwinfrey.biz Joel Fernando], a Brooklyn-based indie video producer specializing in ghetto conundrums.?

==Pick Your Shot==

Think about the scenarios you pass through for fleeting moments every day: If you stood still and could see the environment move around you over the course of a few hours or days, you would have a very different perception of the place. And of course, one of the most striking benefits of time-lapsed recording is that it allows you to see motion in circumstances that are typically too slow for the human eye to detect, like [https://vimeo.com/13275020 plants emerging from the soil] in those old-school nature videos we all watched in high school.

I recommend thinking outside of the box with the subject of your time-lapse to create something new and exciting. Look at the world around you and find something visually interesting that changes at a slow pace. If this is your first time, pick a short time frame to capture your subject. (An hour or two is perfect.) For example, you could make a time-lapse video of the trail of ants that have invaded your kitchen or of a monk meditating in Times Square.

Shooting a time-lapse can take as short as a few hours or as long as a few weeks or months, depending on the subject you want to capture. The rotting of a fast-food cheeseburger may have you shooting for years.

==Gear==

Remember that every movie is just a series of still pictures shown in succession. For recording, you can use pretty much any relatively new DSLR camera with advanced manual settings. GoPro cameras are awesome for time-lapse as well, as you can set them to snap at varying frame rates with a camera timer remote, which you can buy for $25 to $100 depending on what bells and whistles you want. The remote will allow you to choose the rate that your camera is going snap each frame.

Make sure you have plenty of juice for your camera to make it through the shoot. The best way to ensure you?re powered up is to hook your camera up to an outlet, but if you?re going to be shooting at a location with with no power, you can either buy a battery grip for extended life, or hook your camera up to a car battery with an AC/DC converter.

???Pro tip:??? To save battery life, turn the photo preview function off on the camera, so that the digital display doesn?t drain the battery.

As far as memory goes, be on the safe side and use a card with plenty of space, a 32GB memory card should work for most projects.


==Shooting the Scene==

For the more technical details, I got in touch with Utah-based cinematographer and good friend [http://urbanillusion.com/ Daniel Webster] to talk about his basic workflow when he is out shooting time-lapse in the wilderness. Here comes the geek talk....

===Do the Math===

Every second of video is typically comprised of 24 or 30 frames, which means that one minute of video shot at 24 frames per a second is made up of 1,440 still photos. Figuring out the camera?s frame rate depends solely on how fast your subject is changing, and the desired aesthetic of your final product.

Webster recommends a shorter interval or pause time between frames to capture faster-changing scenery like a sunset or cars driving on a highway. Shooting one frame every two seconds will give you a smooth video that captures detail in the motion of your visual.

Shooting with a longer interval, like one frame every 12 hours, should be used with a subject that is changing at a slower pace, like a growing plant or a decomposing organism. Just be aware that your frame rate directly affects the length of the video.

===Camera Settings===

Aperture, ISO, and shutter speed are important camera settings that you?ll want to manually configure before you start shooting. You will find that as you experiment with your settings, you?ll get much better at knowing what to set up. Even though it eats your memory quickly, shooting in raw format will give you the best quality and flexibility with post.

When setting your aperture, make sure to think about any changes in the light that will be happening, With a sunset, you?ll want to open up one or two [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number F-stops] more than normal so you can continue to capture detail when it gets dark. Setting the shutter speed in accordance to the aperture has a major effect on the motion that is captured in the scene. A slower shutter speed will create motion blur that will make the movement of the video smoother, but if the shutter speed is too slow, then the image will become too blurry. One rule of thumb is to set the shutter speed to half of the interval that you have chosen.

With the varied lighting conditions of the outdoors it?s safe to stick with around an 800 to 1600 ISO. This is something that you?ll want to experiment with depending on the light that is available, as well as your aperture and shutter speed settings.

???Pro tip:??? When shooting day-to-night or during any type of gradual light change, you can try to use the auto exposure function. It will automatically correct your camera?s exposure settings so that as the sun goes down your camera will compensate by increasing the aperture. Note that using the auto exposure function will require more work in post-production, as you will have to grade the lighting of each frame to make all of the shots look like they have a consistent exposure through the time-lapse.

===Recording===

Set the camera up onto a sturdy tripod and let the camera do the work while you thumb through naked pictures of your best friend?s girlfriend. Just make sure to keep guard over your equipment ? and make sure not to get too excited and move the camera, or you will have jumpy parts that will ruin the smoothness of the final video.

==Post-Production==

So, you made it this far without your camera being stolen, the battery dying, or the memory card filling too soon, so it?s now time to import all of the photos onto your computer. Since Webster is pretty organized, we?re going to use his workflow as an example. But everyone has his or her own processes and organizational systems, so if you have a better system, go for it.

Once you have imported all of the raw images, import the batch into Photoshop and make any color or exposure corrections. Export to JPEG so that it is easier for the computer to handle for rendering ? you really won't see much quality loss. Just make sure the images are named in chronological order.

There is a plethora of video editing options out there, but Webster recommends finishing the edit of the video in Quicktime 7 or Final Cut Pro, so that?s what we?ll focus on here.

===Quicktime 7===

File> Open Image sequence> Browse to edited photos> Select photos> Choose framerate > Save in your intended format.

You can tweak the settings like image size, and export settings. Apple Pro Res 422 LT or H.264 is good for compressing your video to a smaller file size to watch online. If you want to import this video into another editing program for further editing then export in a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_data_compression lossless] format such as Apple Pro Res 422.

===Final Cut Pro 7===

Import your edited images folder into your project> User preferences> Editing tab> Type "1" into film/still duration> Select all of your images.

If you want to use digital zoom in post-production, you can nest that sequence and play with keyframing your scaling and center settings.

==Conclusion==

Like any video experiment, working with time-lapse is a trial-and-error process. Just don't expect to go out and capture the best time lapse on your first try ? there are a lot of variables to play with.


Source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/howtowiki/~3/28_LdO8SpU0/Become_the_Ultimate_Master_of_Time

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