As some people know, for the past few months, I’ve been actively working on a film project that I’m very close to. We’ve spent the past few weeks shooting elements for a teaser trailer, website and other promotional material utilizing everything from a camera gimbal system to aerial UAVs. This project takes place pretty much entirely in the wilderness and after viewing some time-lapse work from Asheville based photographer, Daniel Lowe, (http://starmountainmedia.com) I am inspired by the idea of utilizing it to assist in telling this story.
Employing Time-Lapse in a Narrative Film
We have spent a couple of days experimenting with a Canon 7D, a 6FT motion controlled slider and a lot of patience to find ways to use it to its full potential. I’ve discovered that the composition and camera placement are of particular importance with time-lapse as the foreground element tends to ground the perspective and heighten the effect. The first couple of shots were somewhat uninspiring but as we dig deeper into the art, we have started to create images that are invaluable to telling the story. It’s incredibly exciting to add time-lapse shots to my narrative storytelling library of tools.
This shot of stars rotating through the night sky with the mountains in silhouette and a tent in the frame was an interesting shot to execute.
We exposed 1 frame for 20 seconds, every 25 seconds, over the course of 82 minutes resulting in 196 frames/images. The footage is included in the teaser and promotional materials for the film “Seven Days ‘Till Midnight” and this simple shot is designed to portray our main character’s experience in the mountains at night. Time-lapse is such a great tool that turns what could be a very basic establishing shot into an amazing shot with nothing more than nature as the subject. Once we fully begin production on the film, I can’t wait to up the ante on the movement and subjects of these time-lapse shots.
A special thanks goes out to Michael Gibbons (http://michaelgibbonsmedia.com) for being a great resource and willing to spend a few cold days and night getting the shots.
Keep checking back for more info on the film’s progress as we are getting very close to launching the project publicly.