Civil Engineer, Thomas Berge, is a hobbyist filmmaker from just outside of Stavanger, Norway. He has carefully edited together a ridiculously gorgeous combination of timelapses and hyperlapses of the west coast over the last three years that will have you calling your travel agent to book a flight out his way. It’s a five minute feast for your eyes that you don’t want to miss.
Berge acquired his first DSLR camera in 2011 – a Canon 600D – that he wanted to make timelapses with. “I had made some tilt-shift and timelapse films with my GoPro camera previously but was eager to get some higher quality images to work with.” Thomas is married and has four children which after working a full time job leaves little time for him to have hobbies, so he stuck close to home for his first attempt as he explains, “the footage in the film is mostly from locations around where I live, and then I also visited some key locations that I wanted to include (Windmills, Stavanger locations, etc.). Most of the footage was also captured in the evenings as I`ve usually been out once the kids were asleep. Luckily the sun is up until 10:30 PM during the summer here, so there have still been a lot of possibilities to get some nice scenes.”
Berge has a background in film editing since 2004 so he approached the film with the music in mind first. Once he had permission from Foreground Set to use the track Go With the Wind, he began planning his scenes based around that music. "That`s also the reason why I focused on having some hyperlapses in the film, as I think they fit nicely with the build-up in the music," he said.
Thomas is saving for a full-frame camera for his next project, "one of the shortcomings I`ve experienced with my APS-C camera is the upper limit for exposure time during night shots. As the full frame cameras have a bigger buffer before they experience start trails, they are more suited for my next project where I want to include mountains and Milky Way shots."
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Be sure to follow Thomas on Facebook, Instagram, and Vimeo to stay in touch and see what he's up to next.
There is some very nice imagery here but, as a filmmaker, I find that so much time-lapse work lacks a coherent narrative. It does need to be more than a series of sequences strung together.
Being a noobie timelapser my self. Got any pointers on how to create a narrative with images like these?
Well, in filmmaking, you don't usually go out and shoot a load of stuff, see what you've got and then write a story around it.
In descriptive filmography, it's usual to have an idea in mind about what you want to communicate to the audience, and how that material will be sequenced/edited once you're acquired it. That idea often takes the form of an outline script, screenplay or storyboard.
Quite often this pre-production period can take just as long as production and post.
yes, it's unfortunate that so much timelapse becomes city symphony-esque, even still there's something to be said for what this guy is doing. he's out shooting, trying new things with camera movement and timelapse speeds, and doing it very very well in stunning places. not to mention when you're shooting a subject like a moving wall of clouds or a roundabout that is so massive, it takes a different approach and skill set to figure out how to shoot such a thing, i'm sure getting that camera movement around the roundabout at such a high angle was difficult. but still, i agree, i think most timelapse filmmakers should take more care in developing narrative, themes, and styles. that said, this is great-especially with a t3i, this guys setup is probably very similar to mine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F7TFv4ohuc) and he's killing it
This is great