The Best Video Combining Stills and Motion We're Going to See All Year

It’s interesting times for those of us shooting photo and video. I enjoy highlighting photographers or videographers who are utilizing elements of both stills and motion work, and are pushing the creative envelope by integrating them so that the end result is more than just the sum of the individual parts. I'm going to go all in and lay my cards down here and say that the video in this post is going to be the most innovative, creative use of combining stills and video together that we’ll see in 2013.

I recently wrote an article on the changing face of music videos and what it means for all of us as creative professionals. Smaller budgets and less time have a way of focusing the mind and pushing us in new ways creatively, and to deliver more with less. This video could easily be the poster child for the points I discussed there.

Hyper lapse (or walk lapse) is simply time lapse with a moving camera point (instead of being locked down to a fixed point on the ground). The video is for Derek Vincent Smith aka ‘Pretty Lights’ and was directed by Anthony Dickenson who added some wonderful ideas and techniques to the hyper lapse mix. The integration of the stills work into the video, and using the monitor screen as a 'portal' in and out of the video and stills work, is incredibly effective.

While everything has been beautifully shot here, thanks to the great DP work of Michael Belcher, as well as the creative stills work by Anthony, the ideas are actually relatively straightforward enough for any one of us to play with and incorporate into our work. Andrew shot the hyper lapse all hand held with a 5D, and used long exposures with camera movement and shake to create the light trail effect. The editing does a great job of marrying the audio track with the visual story, and the whole piece has a beautiful flow.

There is a BTS video that provides an insight into how everything was put together here:

The aim of showcasing work like this is to inspire us all a little, to get out there and push ourselves in new directions and to experiment, possibly leading to some new technique or stylization we wish to incorporate into our work. I'm always keen to see how we can better integrate stills, video and audio in creative ways to deliver more than the sum of their individual parts.

If there are videos you’ve seen recently that have inspired you, or that showcase beautifully integrated stills, video and audio, I’d love to hear about them. Sound off in the comments below!