Video Time Lapse, What NOT to Do

Do you sometimes want to watch a 24-hour work in 10 minutes or less? Then time-lapse photography is for you. It is shooting a lot of photos of the same subject in a given time, putting it all together in one amazing video and plays back in a short time. It’s like watching the sun go up and down while having your coffee break at the same time. Of course, music is added for suspense and value to your time-lapse video using action cameras such as Ace-Cam 4K Ultra HD Action Camera.

Time-lapse may be easier to do, yet some commit videography missteps. Enrique Pacheco is a professional videographer and specializes in DSLR cameras and on time-lapse. He provided guidelines on what to avoid and manage time-lapse video properly. Read and correct your practice.

DIFFERENT SPEEDS AND MIXED ACTIONS

Taking shots with too many actions at different speed can be distracting instead of entertaining. It is important to plan and choose the subject beforehand. Pacheco suggested focusing on one subject only to avoid showing different actions at the different speed.

Consistency and continuity of the movement matter a lot. For instance, when a time-lapse wanted to capture the sunrise over a city with traffic and full of people, a 10s interval can be used to capture the entire path of the sun up until it is down. The people walking and the car passing quickly can be seen in one frame but not on the next which will create inconsistency in the movement and disrupts continuity. According to Pacheco, the result will have no flow and is a chaotic clip.

TOO MANY RETOUCHES

The rise of trending videos, a button for likes, share, and post to social networking sites compelled some filmmakers including the amateurs to impress their growing subscribers and followers. To retouch a video when it comes to the composition, the light, the subject, the quality of the story, and the emotion is accepted, provided it does not go beyond what is normal. Pacheco said that he is not against HDR, as it has appropriate audience and place especially when it fits the story and the subject. What he does not approve of is the use of “aggressive process with surreal textures on buildings and dramatic skies”. In other words, make your output realistic.

Not all can be time-lapsed, which is why planning matters a lot. Choose your subject well, the manner of your execution and always ask yourself if it can be speed up. Remember that using cinematic tools such as time-lapse has its limitation. Although time-lapse allow the viewers to see the shot faster than the real life, not all phenomena, event and activity can be time-lapse especially when there is little or no movement in the subject you want to consider. Some are best left at its natural setting.

Creating your first time-lapse video is easier now than few years ago. A quality action camera such as Ace-Cam 4K Ultra HD Action Camera has features of time lapse and loop recording. You can edit your shots with the use of white balance controls, photo burst, date stamp and of course self-timer for selfies and group pictures. It has Wi-Fi ability which allows you to have a live video feed and control the camera using your smartphone as you take pictures or video.