What is a Time-lapse?
You’ve been hearing about the idea of incorporating time-lapse into your upcoming project but you’re not exactly sure what it is. What is time-lapse, anyway, and what is the purpose of shooting time-lapse video?
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Even if you’re not quite sure what time-lapse video is, you’ve almost certainly seen it used in film at some point.
Commonly seen in documentary films, time-lapse video is frequently incorporated into all types of video and has been used for decades as a way of delivering engaging time lapse examples of progression through history or time on video.
What is a time-lapse Video?
Time-lapse video is characterized as a style of shot that is collected through a long-duration of filming over several hours, days, or weeks.
The idea is to collect the time-lapse footage and then, through editing, combine it in a way that allows the viewer to see a process or procedure that once took place over a long duration of time but can now be experienced in mere seconds or minutes.
Time-lapse video is the process of capturing frames or shots at a slower than normal rate. So, whereas we typically capture 24 frames per second, time-lapse video would require that those 24 frames be captured per minute.
The result is a process that goes much faster on video than it occurred in reality.
How Does time-lapse Work?
Pulling off a time-lapse video is relatively simple. It can be achieved in various ways actually. One of the most common is to set a camera up to capture shots every few seconds or minutes over a period of many hours or days.
The footage is then edited to speed through the captures so that the progression of the event can be visualized.
Time-lapse video is:
- Filmed over an extended period of time at a slowed rate.
- Played back in a faster motion.
- Consists of a series of still images or several sped-up video clips.
Why is time-lapse Used?
Time-lapse is used to capture various events such as construction projects as they progress, plant or animal life as it evolves, or various other events.
Perhaps one of the most frequent uses of time-lapse is the videography of the sunrise or sunset via a time-lapse.
You may have seen time-lapse used to produce clouds that appear to blur through the screen like brush-strokes in the air. Or, you may have noticed a time-lapse shot of traffic speeding through the city in a favorite film?
Generally time-lapse is captured in order to compress time so that you can see more happen in a shorter duration of time.
The idea is to capture everything that happens over an extended period of time, and then speed that up so that it appears that all of those things occurred in a fraction of the time.
Nature, too!
Time lapse shots are often used to show flowers growing or blooming.
You may have also seen time-lapse video used to show character connections – for example, time-lapse is often used to magnify the mental struggle or sense of anxiety that comes from being paranoid.
Through time-lapse, the character may appear to be bouncing or running all over the place and acting frantically when in reality, the shoot was taken with a character reacting normally but then time-lapse is used to speed it up.
Time-lapse is also used to produce documentary films. You may have seen a time-lapse variation that shows the progression of time passing through the documentary.
Many different uses of time-lapse exist in videography. So, now that you know, “What is time-lapse?” What kind of time-lapse videography will you incorporate into your next film?
