A Taste of New York is a new time-lapse film that has been getting a lot of attention since it was published. It features some new and interesting techniques and a lot of motion designing. We had a quick interview with the creators of the video. The times when time-lapse videos were just simple compilations of tripod clips with music in background are long gone. Today’s best time-lapse videos are all about motion, story and sound design – something that Austria-based video production company FilmSpektakel is well aware of. Their latest piece is the third instalment in their independent A Taste Of… series, and this time they bring us to New York City. Peter Jablonowski, Thomas Pöcksteiner and Lorenz Pritz are the filmmakers behind this time-lapse film. They spent ten days in NYC in September 2016, during which they set out to collect a lot of great angles – including from an actual helicopter. They shot 65,000 photos, which took up 2,6 TB of storage space. The final 3-minute video took 36 hours to render on the best-equipped iMac available. Skyline timelapse clip. Image credit: FilmSpektakel One of the most interesting shots in the video is the clip of the yellow cabs. The guys took photos of yellow cabs whenever they got a chance, covering them from as many different angles as possible. They gathered 2,000 photos in total and compiled them into a hyper lapse around a cab in post production. It took them 5 whole days of post work to get this one shot. We asked Peter Jablonowski a few questions about the video: c5D: How did you come up with the idea of going to New York to shoot the next episode in your A Taste Of… series? Peter: We always had the plan to try our A Taste Of… series on an international level, so we were looking for a country or city to do this experiment in. We’ve been to New York two times before so we already knew the city, which made it easier for us to accomplish this project. c5D: I guess that the Yellow Cab clip was the hardest and most time-consuming clip in the video, especially from a post-production point of view. Are there any other clips that were also difficult to shoot? Did you have to overcome any extraordinary obstacles to get the exact angle you wanted? Peter: The helicopter ride was one of the best and at the same time most challenging things we experienced in NYC. We had never been on a helicopter before and flying in between those skyscrapers is pure adrenaline. Trying to take stable pictures while having the doors off is extremely difficult. We first tried it with the help of a single-handed gimbal (CAME-TV Single) which worked fine when the helicopter hovered above one place, but during movement it failed completely because of the strong winds. Most of the helicopter shots in the video are hand-held and stabilized in post production. The helicopter shot was handheld. Image credit: FilmSpektakel c5D: Did you have any problems with the police or other authorities when setting up tripods and all the gear on the streets? Did you have to get any permissions for all that? Peter: Luckily we had no problems with police at all. We were well aware of where tripods are allowed (on the streets, etc.) and where and when tripods they are forbidden. In these cases, we knew how to make do with sand bags, magic arms or even with a stack of tissues. For each location we tried to bring as little gear as possible so we wouldn’t attract too much attention. The authorities were very friendly and appreciated our awareness of the rules and laws. c5D: Any funny BTS stories of your NYC shoot? Peter: Building security kicked us out of our Airbnb after a few nights because it was being let illegally. We didn’t know anything about that, so we had no plan B when security told us to be gone within one hour or else the cops would show up. Airbnb handled it very well and booked us a hotel right next to Times Square, so we were lucky after all to be right in the city center. c5D: Do you already have a plan for the next episode in the A Taste Of… series? If you do, which location do you have in sight? Peter: Yes, we are continuing these A Taste Of… videos, and in fact the next episode has already been shot. To be honest, we are not quite sure when to release it… It will be in a few more months in the future, I guess… Where the next one will take place is still a secret, but if you are following us on Facebook, you could already take a good guess ;-) Getting multiple clips at once. Image credit: FilmSpektakel In terms of equipment, FilmSpektakel used a Sony A7R II, Sony a6300 and two Canon 6D bodies. There is a full list of equipment along with other additional information directly in the video description on the Vimeo link. All episodes of A Taste Of… have received a Vimeo Staff Pick award, so it is really worth watching the older pieces too. Links for those are also in the Vimeo page of the video. Feeling inspired to shoot a time-lapse video now? Do you have any samples you would like to share? Let us know in the comments below!

The Syrp Genie II, the new version of the motion controller by the New Zealand-based company, has been announced during NAB 2017. The all-new Syrp Genie II is a motion control device that improves on the first generation and brings more possibilities in motion control for video and time-lapse. A couple of months ago, we heard about the Syrp Slingshot, a wire cam for dynamic time lapses. Now the company has introduced their new Syrp Genie II time lapse motion controller device. The new Genie consists of two components: Linear drive system that makes up the base of the Genie. It can be attached to any slider on the market and allows you to achieve linear motion control through the string just like the first generation Genie. You can use the base only and attach camera head directly to it if you just want linear motion. Pan/tilt component which can be attached to the base and brings full 3-axis motion control. The new Syrp Genie II claims to be faster, quieter and more powerful than the first generation, and has WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, which serves for communication between the linear base and the pan/tilt module of the product for precise 3-axis control. WiFi is used for high-speed transfer of footage and for communication with the Syrp Genie app. It has two USB-C ports on the linear base and three USB-C ports on the pan/tilt module. It is capable to control camera settings like aperture, exposure time and ISO directly through the Genie app, and works with exchangeable Lithium batteries. We can certainly see that the new locking mechanism is very nice, the linear drive system offers a smaller footprint and the whole system is lighter than the first generation. As a first look, also the pan/tilt head seems like a powerful tool for time-lapse photography as well as video applications with its low noise design, though only a proper field test will provide the necessary insights. On a side note, we have high expectations for products coming from Syrp. Both the Syrp Genie II Linear Drive System & Pan/Tilt Component will cost about $2,000, but will also be available as separate products. Syrp plans to start shipping in November.

HyperZoom inventor Geoff Tomkinson was the first person to start producing digital time-lapse before the advent of DSLRs, and several of his videos have been selected as Vimeo Staff Picks. His technique incorporates hyper-lapse, impossibly long zooms and hidden transitions with the use of layers in 3D space in After Effects. Read on for all about HyperZoom in this guest post from Geoff himself! Geoff Tompkinson The Origins of HyperZoom During my time as the only full-time professional time-lapse shooter producing stock material for ImageBank Film – then Getty – I developed a number of skills. These included everything from how to achieve smooth day to night transitions with smooth colour balance change working with only JPGs as Raw was not then available, to how to build an intervalometer. Most importantly, I learned the ability to use nested resolution comps to enable extreme zoom without the need for expensive zoom lenses. While teaching an After Effects-based time-lapse class in Istanbul, my audience was blown away by a zoom-out shot that started on an ant on a leaf and ended several miles away across a lake in New Hampshire. I realized then that perhaps I should put some effort into a project I had been thinking about for a while, whereby I would effectively be able to ‘travel’ with the zoom. That’s how the HyperZoom technique was born. How to HyperZoom HyperZoom is a suite of techniques, both in the way the footage is shot and in the way it is post-produced. The goal is to make a virtual seamless ‘flight’ through a series of locations. These locations could be in their real positions or they could be many miles apart and made to appear as if next to each other. What’s paradoxical about these videos that feature a huge amount of movement is that for the most part the rule is to not actually move or zoom the camera during capture, as most of the movement is produced in virtual 3D space. The exceptions are when I use hyper-lapse or rotary head shots as part of the sequence, but these camera-moving techniques should also fit in seamlessly with the virtual movement so there is no loss of visual continuity. But why does HyperZoom work? When we look at a photograph of a car for instance, the only way we can tell if it’s a toy car or a real car — if viewing the scene from a single viewpoint — is to move the viewpoint itself and see what happens to the parallax shift between the car and its surroundings. If we shoot the scene as a series of layers related to their depth positions within the scene, we can reassemble these layers in 3D space in post-production. This separation of every scene into depth layers means that editing cannot be done in a conventional editor like Premiere or Final Cut, using After Effects instead in order to move a virtual camera to navigate the layers. The nature of this reassembly means that some scenes also require extreme rotoscoping work. The Making of Upper Austria – An Incredible Journey We were approached by the Upper Austrian Tourist Board back in January 2016 to use our HyperZoom technique to produce a seamless flight through a series of selected locations throughout Upper Austria. For this project, we produced a storyboard and flight plan that would enable us to smoothly pass through all the locations with no cuts. This involved us traveling all over Upper Austria to recce the locations and decide, shot by shot, how we would proceed. I needed to be sure I could escape from any given location by flying over the horizon. This meant adding more capability to the system so we could fly over mountains and through trees. I was pretty confident I could do this, and the technique developed and improved as the project progressed. It’s very important with a production like this to maintain a consistent lighting angle as the camera passes between and through scenes, and that sky conditions match from one scene to the next. We used the fantastic PhotoPills app to enable us to accurately plan shooting angles, times and date ranges that would work for us. The PhotoPills app The big problem with shooting a video that covers several seasons and hundreds of square miles is always the weather. The sequence order of the locations is often dictated by the particular situations, as we always have to have an entry and exit technique that blends seamlessly with what goes before and after. That’s why post-production is often handled in out-of-sequence sections, and integrated with other sections once they have been shot. This actually makes post-production even harder as we cannot just proceed in a linear fashion through the video. That said, one thing I spend a lot of effort in explaining to clients is that changing the sequence of events or inserting or removing a location involves an extreme amount of work since it can have roll-on effects both before and after that extend to many scenes. This is one of the drawbacks compared to a regular video edit, where these sort of changes are very easy to make. In terms of post-production, we had to install extra hard-drive capability and increase the number of available render nodes. Working with multiple 8K sequences inside After Effects meant that everything had to be done with proxies to enable a more fluid working experience, as these projects tend to get very complex. Partial After Effects project flow diagram A Closer Look at Some of the Scenes The Opening Shot (00:00 – 00:30) This shot took many months and several visits before we finally had the correct weather conditions to shoot it. We also wanted to use the same ship in all three scenes (from above, from behind and inside), but the ship’s schedule meant the vessel would only pass us once per day. Each shot of the ship needed a different day. From a post-production perspective, this shot was quite complex as it required accurate timing of the camera move to fit smoothly into the walking of the cyclists and the use of the smartphone. The extreme resolution requirements for the move towards and through the phone meant that this cyclist sequence had to be shot using four cameras firing in synchrony as fast as they could. As with many other parts of this video, we found working with Mocha Pro for the rotoscoping and tracking work was a great help. The Lentos Museum (01:24 – 01:31) The idea here was to have a long run through the art museum exhibition space and exit the building on the other side. The problem was that there was no window to exit through. I decided, with the agreement of the Lentos, to build my own end wall and window using the same style as the other windows in the building. ARS Electronica and Musiktheater Linz Transitions (01:38 – 02:18) The ARS Electronica sequence used 5 different camera positions and a hyperlapse turn through the final room before freeze-framing into a poster to rapidly move to the next daytime scene. This poster board doesn’t actually exist in this location, and was comped in from a different part of the city and modified to fit our requirements. The final shot in the theatre required a massive rotoscoping job that involved tracking the windows, tables, chairs, menu cards, etc., as the camera passes through the cafeteria into the distant view over the rooftops of Linz. This rotoscoping job alone took several weeks of solid work for what in the final movie lasts for around 4 seconds. Thanks once again to Mocha Pro for providing such great tools to assist with this laborious task. 5Fingers – Dachstein (04:00 – 04:10) In order to be able to maintain fluid motion over and past the platform as if using a drone, we needed to rotoscope the entire platform and all the people moving around on it frame by frame, person by person. Several weeks’ work again for just 6 seconds of video. Finale (05-35 – 05:45) We had decided to finish by flying over the trees towards one of the most beautiful scenes in Upper Austria – The Gosau Glacier. However, we soon realised we would have a better finish if we went into the glacier, then slid across it and retreated to reveal its beautiful sunset reflection in Lake Gosau below. All in all, the project took around 8 months to complete – including the inspired original music and sound design by Vincent Jacq and Xavier Plouchart. We are very grateful to the Upper Austrian Tourist Board for their enthusiasm, support and funding of this project. It was great to be working on a schedule that allowed sufficient time for final polishing as well as technique-development along the way. So there you have it, a close look at the HyperZoom technique by the man himself, Geoff Tompkinson. Want some more HyperZooming? Check out HyperZooming Through Hallstatt, a Vimeo Staff Pick just like An Incredible Journey.

Drew Geraci from District 7 Media, who has been a guest on our ON THE COUCH series before (click here) is certainly best known for his timelapse work, particularly the intro of the enormously popular Netflix show “House of Cards”. He’s taken his timelapse skills and applied them using the new app Prisma (free on iTunes), which isn’t just another photo-turned-painting processing app on the phone, but rather a complex set of algorithms that produce really stunning results that do actually look like a painting. In a tedious process, he has processed thousands of images one-by-one using his phone and stitched them together to create an amazing animated timelapse. Read the description of his workflow in his own words and watch the side-by-side video of the original timelapse and the processed images below!   From Drew: After seeing so many stunning still pictures created in the Prisma App, I decided I wanted to take it to the next level and introduce motion. I had recently returned from a trip to China with hours of timelapse and drone footage collecting dust and decided this would be the perfect project to incorporate them in to. Each frame of the 1 minute and 20 second video had to be processed via the Prisma App which took almost 80 hours to complete. The processing/rendering was at the mercy of the servers. Most of the project had to be completed between 11pm and 4am EST because the app would freeze or shutdown due to overloaded serves or too many users on at the same time. Thankfully the algorithm used to create the painting-like scene(s) was very consistent when it came to processing the images. The total video was approximately 2500 frames and took a bit of ingenuity to stitch together. By the end of the project (which took around 5 days to produce) my fingers were numb and eyes bloodshot. The worst part was the constant repetition of taking the photo, processing the photo, moving 1 frame forward, and then saving the image. Sometimes I would forget to do a step and have to start over completely. It was mind-numbing work to say the least! The easiest way for me to create the video was to physically take a picture of the video (on a 4k monitor) using an iPad and save each photo directly to the iPad. Once all of the photos were taken, I used my PC workstation to directly pull the images off the iPad and onto a local hard-drive to continue the processing. All in all, I’ve very excited to have the project complete and out on the web. I’m looking forward to producing some 4k content once the desktop app arrives. Until then, 1074×1074 is good enough for me!

Watch previous episodes of ON THE COUCH & ON THE GO by clicking here! Visit our Vimeo and YouTube playlists, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! Please visit our sponsors’ websites to keep new episodes of ON THE COUCH coming! Thanks to G-Technology and Røde Microphones. Drew Geraci, Claus Andersen, Greg Crosby We start off part 2 of episode 29 of ON THE COUCH by talking about how Drew actually produces his timelapses (like the intro of House of Cards for David Fincher). He explains how he has moved on from Canon DSLRs to the Sony a7RII and a7SII, using intervalometers instead of internal apps (which is possible on the Sony cameras). He points out how much better the latitude on RAW images from Sony cameras is these days compared to the Canon counterparts. Still from one of Drew Geraci’s time-lapses. © District 7 Media Claus dives deeper into how he is organizing online communities via Facebook, helping people finding answers to the questions they have around their cameras or filmmaking goals. Greg from our sponsor G-Technology explains the newest additions to G-Technology’s product range, among it the Shuttle XL RAID series, which is made for outdoor use (and which we used to produce my recent wildlife documentary “Through The Thick” in South Africa – click here if you missed it!). He also talks about the ever-evolving range of card readers that G-Technology is providing for their EV series products, which means you don’t need to use any additional cables to connect your media to your hard drives anymore. He also talks about the new G-Rack 12, a new rack-mount NAS system with 12 bays, providing up to 120TB of storage for data-intense productions. G-Technology Shuttle XL RAID with ev slots for expansion (2.5″ hard drives or RED / CFast Card Readers) Please visit our sponsors’ websites to keep new episodes of ON THE COUCH coming! Thanks to G-Technology and Røde Microphones.

Watch previous episodes of ON THE COUCH & ON THE GO by clicking here! Visit our Vimeo and YouTube playlists, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! Please visit our sponsors’ websites to keep new episodes of ON THE COUCH coming! Thanks to G-Technology and Røde Microphones. Drew Geraci, Claus Andersen, Greg Crosby Drew Geraci is a cinematographer based in Washington DC, and specialises in time-lapse shooting. His most notable piece of work is probably the opening sequence of the Netflix hit show “House Of Cards“, one of the most popular shows in the world today. He had posted some of his time-lapse work online, when he suddenly got a call from none other than show creator David Fincher who commissioned him to shoot the opening sequence. If for some odd reason you haven’t seen the show yet, I definitely recommend checking it out. Here’s the intro sequence of House Of Cards season 2: Claus Andersen from Bodhi Visuals in Denmark is a filmmaker who runs a number of very popular filmmaking groups on Facebook. They are mostly based around shooting with modern cameras, among them the very popular Sony a7S user group, which has proven to be a great source of insight about the popular Sony mirrorless cameras. Greg Crosby works for G-Technology, one of the sponsors of our show. He tells us about how they focus on workflow solutions for people like Drew, who deal with huge amounts of data on their time-lapse shoots every day. Drew tells us how he now works with the a7S II 12 Megapixels RAW and a7R II in 42 Megapixels RAW, which sometimes results in over 1 TB of data for a single time-lapse shot. In the show, Drew explains the challenges and advantages behind handling this kind of quality and resolution. Stay tuned for part 2 of our conversation with Drew, Claus and Greg! Please visit our sponsors’ websites to keep new episodes of ON THE COUCH coming! Thanks to G-Technology and Røde Microphones.

“Production Insights is a new irregular cinema5D series, highlighting actual paid productions using modern cameras and production gear. We are talking about real-world issue-solving on real-world sets, with real-world clients and budgets. At cinema5D, we are lucky to have our headquarters located in beautiful Vienna—the city with the highest quality of life, according to a recent study. We are also proud of the fact that there are many amazing filmmakers here, and the pool of talent just keeps getting better all the time. Among them are the guys behind FilmSpektakel, a company that has made international waves; particularly for their timelapse work in recent years. Their latest addition to their timelapse collection, ‘A Taste of Vienna’, is an epic post-modern montage of impressive timelapse shooting in combination with excellent sound design, providing a spectacular look at the many faces of Austria’s capital. We have reached out to Thomas Pöcksteiner from FilmSpektakel to give the cinema5D audience a bit of insight into the making of this film. But first, watch it for yourself—it accumulated 300,000 views in the first few days and has been staff picked by Vimeo.” —Nino Leitner Making ‘A Taste of Vienna’ Our very first film, which gave birth to FilmSpektakel, was a hyperlapse movie about our hometown of Vienna. We’d only just delved into timelapse photography at the time, and looking back on our first project, we realised that we weren’t satisfied with it anymore—our skills had evolved and we decided that it was time to shoot a new, better timelapse movie. It was early 2015 when we started editing ‘A Taste of Austria‘ and we finally felt ready to start another Vienna timelapse project. The City of Vienna also approached us somewhere around that time, asking whether we’d be interested in making a timelapse film about the city; since ‘A Taste of Austria’ saw success, both nationally and around the globe, we thought “why not?”… and here we are! As spring 2015 rolled around, we sat down and planned every single frame of the film. We ensured that all of the transitions and motives matched. Once we were finished with the storyboard, we began shooting—not a simple task when handling University and our “regular” commercial film jobs. Any spare time that happened to coincide with good weather was spent shooting ‘A Taste of Vienna.’ The very nature of the film meant that we needed to shoot from inaccessible areas of the city. Luckily, we had the City of Vienna on our side and this granted us access to places that would otherwise be impossible (or even illegal!) to shoot from otherwise—such as the Burgtheater roof, Vienna City Hall, and the National Library. The Equipment that made ‘A Taste of Vienna’ We were also supported by Canon Austria, who provided us with two incredible lenses: the Canon ED 11-24mm and a TS-E 17mm. The EF 11-24mm was used for the extremely wide panorama shots and that really helped to reduce lens distortion (a common problem for inferior wide angle lenses). The TS-E 17mm was used for the shot in front of the Opera, where we had to take up a position very close to the building—a tilt shift lens was necessary here, otherwise, the facade would have been distorted dramatically. For cameras, we mostly used Canon full-frame models like the Canon EOS 5D Mark III and the EOS 6Ds, because of the high dynamic range and quality of wide angle shots offered by the 35mm sensor. Shooting ‘A Taste of Vienna’ was a lot of fun, not only because we got to see some of Austria’s landmarks from a whole new perspective but for the sheer number of new things we got to try, too: The Spacelapses Recall the first two shots of ‘A Taste of Vienna’, where the camera circles the horse statues? These so-called Spacelapses are tough to shoot, as you have to keep the same distance between your camera and the object the whole time. So, our mornings before capturing these shots consisted of taking some cord and chalk and drawing circles around some of Vienna’s landmarks—simple and effective! The Carshot We had no intention of doing the shot inside the car in a static fashion—that would have been boring! Instead, we started to think of ways that we could mount a slider inside of our car while maintaining stability. After a slightly frustrating period of trial and error, a combination of a tripod and several tension belts did the trick nicely! The Riverlapse Have you ever made a walk-lapse in a river, in complete darkness? We’re proud to say that now, we have! In the latter half of ‘A Taste of Vienna,’ there’s a scene in which we fly over the River Wien—which just happens to flow through, and beneath, the City of Vienna. Out came our rubber boots and we slowly scrambled our way through the dirt and grime—with one of us on the bank at all times for safety reasons, and to turn on a flashlight to break the pitch black between shots! For post production we used LRTimelapse and Adobe Lightroom for grading, Adobe After Effects was used for editing the transitions. Did you enjoy watching A Taste of Vienna as much as we enjoyed making it? Perhaps you have a similar project that you’d like to share? Get in touch in the comments and we’d be happy to answer any questions, or to watch some of your timelapse work!

Cinevate has announced a new product for time-lapse shooters. Expanding on the wind-up motor for the Duzi 3, the Cinevate Modo Pan offers users a simple load & roll pan tool for motion time-lapses. What Exactly is the Cinevate Modo Pan? Put simply, Modo Pan is a wind-up motor—there’s no interface and no software, it is all mechanical. This simplistic design is sure to appeal a broad range of people. It can achieve 360-degrees of rotation, and does so in two speeds – 30 minutes and 60 minutes. The Cinevate Modo Pan sits between your tripod head and camera (attaching via 1/4″ thread), wind it backwards and let it pan. I’ve got the Modo module myself for the Duzi 3, which enables a no-fuss approach to achieve motorised slides. I’m very keen to try it out properly; initial tests have been positive. You can combine the Cinevate Modo Pan with the Cinevate Grip Reacher and Cinevate Modo to create some interesting, bi-axis time-lapses moves.