Can Anyone Figure Out How This Timelapse Was Filmed?

The guys at T-Recs (short for timelapse recordings) created a timelapse video that is unlike anything I have seen before. We have all seen timelapse videos that have camera movement but nothing like this. Some how these guys are making really big moves, almost like they are shooting out of an airplane. Anyone know how this sort of thing is done?

July 29, 2011

Lee Morris

Timelapse

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http://www.facebook.com/people/Adrian-Staicu/100000991680303 Adrian Staicu
Found a better perspectiv for the first scene: http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=sh70psj4bpn7&lvl=18.117742741439027&dir=355.8873091472438&sty=b&where1=Dresden%2C%20SN%2C%20Germany&form=LMLTCC
Also kite aerial photography with a nice pan tilt head and remote might do the trick in most location.
http://www.facebook.com/kidyosh ‘Sa Jamil Hogan
The super tight wire is my guess also. Also like a zip line for a camera.
http://www.facebook.com/kidyosh ‘Sa Jamil Hogan
While plausible I don’t think you would get the needed stability out of such a method. They can only hold so much weight and the gear needed to stabilise a camera with be more than it could handle IMO
http://www.facebook.com/kidyosh ‘Sa Jamil Hogan
A tripod/monopod does seem likey for a few scenes but there are some where the elevation is too great to be each and there is a section where they go OVER MOVING TRAFFIC.
http://www.facebook.com/maury.mathieu Mathieu Maury
I just a plugin for AE, Warp Stabilizer : http://vimeo.com/23374841
http://www.facebook.com/C.Kreutzmann Christian Kreutzmann
They stated on their Website that they are using this technique:
http://vimeo.com/18651053
http://twitter.com/TJ_Jeffrey TJ Jeffrey
It’s done on wires, either existing (like telegraph poles etc) or constructed for the purpose. If you look at power pylon in the UK, many of the top most apex wire has another wire wrapped around it. These are fibre circuits carrying all kinds of stuff like TV signals (a lot of broadcasters feed video between stations on these wires). They were installed long after the pylons were built by a mechical device which crawls a long the wire installing the extra fibre circuit as it goes. I’m guessing these timelapses are created with a similar device which carries the camera & intervolometre and is programmed to move along the wire at a set rate.
K4i Kasrgi
Some of the shots could well have been done with very long sliders. Ditogears Portaslider ( http://ditogear.com/featured/introducing-portaslider/ ) is a modular slider system that might handle such lengths. Some of the BTS shots show Kessler Crane controllers, so maybe sliders in combination with the revolution head by Kessler Crane…
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TSFHKT64ZUG3SFSVMYQRGF2HWE MARK P
I am guessing they did it with some sort of camera with a lens type device on it. that is just a guess
http://thegirlinthemiddle.wordpress.com/ Molly_Mac
i noticed the same thing on the “ski lift” shots…(the one going up the hill)
http://www.facebook.com/people/Albert-Lui/26800480 Albert Lui
Sorry, is the video dead? I can’t view it on this site or the T-Recs site.
http://twitter.com/loosebball Karan Makvandi
some of the shots are from public over pass and walk ways. Other shots I believe are shoot from a jib with some sort of elevating platform or spider, that means in moved in two dimensions
brent beaupre
ha no body on here guessed it but ima say… HOT AIR BALLON… the time lapses were defintily over several hours ruling out an rc helicopter which can fly for maybe 10 or 15 minutes at a time (i have one) and then the wires is just a little ridiculous to do and could get super expensive especially for a couple of the first shots way above the ground… and for the lower shots they still could have done it with hot air ballooons and if the clouds werent fake that would also make perfect sense
brent beaupre
ha no body on here guessed it but ima say… HOT AIR BALLON… the time lapses were defintily over several hours ruling out an rc helicopter which can fly for maybe 10 or 15 minutes at a time (i have one) and then the wires is just a little ridiculous to do and could get super expensive especially for a couple of the first shots way above the ground… and for the lower shots they still could have done it with hot air ballooons and if the clouds werent fake that would also make perfect sense
http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Heidrich/580882400 David Heidrich
The City is called Dresden (in Germany) and the shot with the moscque (it’s actually an old tabacco factory) has to be shot from a boat on the Elbe river.
http://www.facebook.com/dmburns David Burns
I thought maybe a light rail in some shots and the very last scene you see the grass intrude on the bottom of the shot indicating that maybe they’re on a road/vehicle mounted job?
http://twitter.com/choiMatthew choiMatthew
Would setting up a guide wire work for these kind of footage? *Think of the awesome guide-wired camera angle at the F1 Silverstone grand prix*
http://twitter.com/arthurkendrick arthurkendrick
good find this is basically the rig I thought they were using, motorized dolly is the way to do it.
http://www.facebook.com/johnny.dejaegher Johnny De Jaegher
They use Kessler Cranes and Motion Control Gear : http://www.kesslercrane.com/
You can check their Vimeo to see more making of’s and tests : http://vimeo.com/trecsgermany
And if you know some German you might also read on their blog/website how they do it : http://www.t-recs.org/
Fernando Garcia
Simply Amazing.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KTYBIMQG4LKHFYLUSBSS4ERT4Q patrick
The video is amazing…nothing like i have seen before done in time-lapse so its amazing…hmmm…i have been reading about the gigapan..can be seen here http://gigapan.org/ it does pano shots and can do time-lapse too..but maybe i could be wrong…
http://www.facebook.com/people/Rich-Maher/1651965517 Rich Maher
Obviously BLACK MAGIC!
http://twitter.com/JackPopePhoto Jack Pope
I think it could be from a small vehicle like a golf cart, with someone just panning a tripod head to keep the photos similar. then using photoshop to automatically align the photos
Jon McGuffin
Still not sure why so many people don’t think at least some portions of this were shot via wire, zipline, etc.. seems somewhat obvious to me and actually also would reveal why the very small jitters and jumps and sags as the wire would clearly do this.
You know, the same cable system the NFL uses on their big Sunday and Monday night games….
Jon McGuffin
Still not sure why so many people don’t think at least some portions of this were shot via wire, zipline, etc.. seems somewhat obvious to me and actually also would reveal why the very small jitters and jumps and sags as the wire would clearly do this.
You know, the same cable system the NFL uses on their big Sunday and Monday night games….
http://www.facebook.com/max.queenan Max Queenan
Look at the clocks in many of the shots…almost all of them were under half an hour.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1242846065 Matt Mognon
They used this: http://www.easyrentvr.it/librerie/23/easy-rent-pulizia-piattaforme-aeree-2-mini.jpg
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OOQ4EJLEO33BZHUO7NPOTMXXQA Speedy
I didnt see anything that didnt look like it was a full ariel shot.
*
Definitely lots of shots across bridges. Most likely done from a dolly like
mentioned below, or a flatbed truck (for the height). Would suspect the dolly,
as it wouldnt impeded traffic in the process not to mention it looked like
similar shots from several venues where vehicles wouldnt be permitted, however
since I havent traveled to these places… I dunno first hand.
* Definitely a
dolly (not a dolly rail system), but a movable platform on wheels for the shots going
across the courtyards, down the grass, down walkways, etc. Like
something on a PT boom arm (ie: Cambo V15 dolly system)
* On the uphill walk
throught the vineyard if not the dolly, then a painstaking process to level the
legs of a tripod.
* On the ending shot, simply a dolly roll along a higher
vineyard level looking across and back to the left. You can see the vineyard
come into the bottom of the frame at the end.
Take all the Timelapse, and
render the video.
Then feed the video thorugh a post-process effect like New
Blue FX – Stablizer, to level out all the video frames and make it look like
a smooth, contiguous video.
Anonymous
yep… definitely using some sort of dolly on a bridge.
Here’s a similar timelapse of Vancouver:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xMz2SnSWS4
skip to 1:45 to see the effect
I live in Vancouver so I can confirm there’s definitely a bridge there
Anonymous
yep… definitely using some sort of dolly on a bridge.
Here’s a similar timelapse of Vancouver:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xMz2SnSWS4
skip to 1:45 to see the effect
I live in Vancouver so I can confirm there’s definitely a bridge there
http://twitter.com/JoeCubicle Pat Giambattista
If you look them up on YouTube the have a video where they BTS themselves playing with a kessler dolly rig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMSIFojSf3g . They could have easily set this up, let it run, pick it up and move it, rinse and repeat. Set it up on top of some 8′ step ladders maybe? Easy peasy.
http://twitter.com/i619619 Emanuele Meazzo
Use a dolly, then move the dolly forward when the camera has finished the length .
Vincent Muccioli
There is a guy that shoots video with a 7d on a huge helicopter (like 4-5ft wide) that has been shown on fstoppers before. You obviously couldn’t do it with just a $50 RC copter.
Anonymous
The vineyard shot was the “worst” if you can say that about this great video. I think there was a mix of technics used. My original guess was a motorized zip wire of some kind. However, when I got to the vinyard, I did thnk it was a manual process, or at least in that shot a series of smaller rigs.
Either way, great video.
M
http://www.facebook.com/people/Tevan-Shii-Lockhart/1718337715 Tevan Shii Lockhart
I think I know! Its a motorized skycam, its the only explanation. Based on this video, whatever device they are using, is very portable, can reach great height, travel long distance, and is completely motorized = SkyCam :)
Some of the lower angled shots are probably a long slider, but the high stuff that seems to defy physics, SkyCam.
stephan mantler
I’m pretty sure it’s all on the ground, and the ‘high stuff’ is actually from overpasses, possibly with a bazooka on a solid, motorized dolly.
stephan mantler
I’m pretty sure it’s all on the ground, and the ‘high stuff’ is actually from overpasses, possibly with a bazooka on a solid, motorized dolly.
http://WWW.LIFEASCINEMA.BLOGSPOT.COM SEAN SHIMMEL
Ummm… the rogue seagull from the GoPro video
Gus Munoz
RC helicopter / apparatis ?
https://profiles.google.com/kyphem Realist
They have a cable system setup you can see at their youtube channel
http://www.facebook.com/svendeweb Svend Erik Jensen
In vineyard they often have some small monorails. They use them to transport the harvest as a tractor can’t enter the steep fields.
Anonymous
GPS integrated Gyro Octocopter and cropping of the images for stabilization. Some crazy sick things being done by people in Europe with them…like mounting a 5dmkII on it, programming it to fly a certain path and altitude and all while beaming the image the oktokopter sees back to the r/c pilot’s goggles (FPV: first person view).
http://www.vimeo.com/search/videos/search:oktokopter/st/5592f962
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=3400935 Rob Ogden
I’d say Kessler Oracle/Revolution mounted on a scissor lift.
Anonymous
My guess is a couple of goats with a 12ft robotic slider attached in between them. Sometimes you just have to think “outside” the box. I used a llama last week on a shoot as my assistant and it was magical.
E. Andersen
What if they took a video, perhaps with a RED or something that has very high resolution, then cut out every few frames? If it were done at a high enough fps, might it still look that smooth (if the frames were cut but there were enough frames taken, the camera wouldn’t have moved very far so the frames that were left still appear to be continuous since the camera had only gone a few mm). Can’t you pull a 14 MP still from a RED video; that ought to be enough to get an HD video out of it…
VICTAR KARPUK
It’s vary old composing technique a sequence of center filmed images composed together in the middle point using morphing or composing software. No slider, dolly or specific equipment is needed.
http://vimeo.com/16063824
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=574397140 André Wirsig
Kite would be to unstable. That are all ground shoots – like the long office building roof you see in the foreground.
Ryan Moore
Anyone else see some HDR in there? That would just add to the complexity of the shoot unless they did it with adjustments in post….which would just up the pain-in-the-ass factor. Pretty impressive either way!
Anonymous
I agree. It definitely looks like a skycam job.
Jeremy Wong
Robot works?

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