Finally, after extremely long production and planning process, I’m happy to annouce that my latest flow motion hyperlapse film is out! Some of you should know, that I’ve been developing that, for example from my Instagram. For sure it’s my biggest project made so far and I think one of the biggest hyperlapse projects ever made. In this post you’ll get information about the production process and you can find a behind the scenes video.
First, of course, check out the video if you haven’t seen it yet. Then you can read production information included in this post and watch Behind The Scenes video below.
The whole video contains mostly hyperlapse technique. You can check out my tutorial about that technique here: How to shoot hyperlapse [TUTORIAL] or try the full in-depth course on that topic: Hyperlapse Course
Check out detailed explanation on every shot and transition in the film
Explore Poland Director’s Commentary
Director's Commentary
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The whole process of creating this film was really long. The first idea came to me around August 2017. Not that the idea is somehow complicated, it was just ‘make a hyperlapse film about your country’. I was thinking about something like that a long time ago. But that time in August I finally thought I am able to do it. A few years back I think I couldn’t handle arranging all of that including people, locations or even transportation and accomodation costs. For the first time I felt like I can do that and when I look at it I will be happy about it. It’s just like a Wrocław video, a personal project, so everything was done for my own money and all the people involved in this project dedicated their time for free. Without their dedication, I won’t be able to make this project.
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The whole video, just like my previous film Panta Rhei Wrocław, was entirely made in After Effects. Sound desing was made in Adobe Audition also by me (sound effects). Music was composed by amazing Łukasz Łędzki. He contacted me while I was working on the project and proposed that he will make a track for the film. I was really amazed with his portfolio, which includes tracks for trailers of the biggest Disney feature films, like for example latest The Nutcracker and The Four Realms.
Excited to try my techniques? Try Hyperlapse Course on my blog!
I couldn’t count how much time the post production will take. I was editing all the shots right after I captured them, so the post production was done in parallel with the shooting. However, it would for sure be more than a month when combined toghether.
I don’t like such counting, but I did it as it will be probably one of the most common questions: for the whole project I took ~12 000 pictures (just for the main video, excluding behind the scenes shots). And here’s why I don’t like promotiong the timelapse film with the number of pictures taken: it doesn’t mean anything. Or, on the other hand, the more picture you took the better? More pictures taken mean that you have to delete more of them. So, you took more bad shots? 😉 I mean, let’s consider 2 minute video (at standard 25 frames per second). 2 minutes is 120 seconds, multiplied by 25 pictures per second equals 3000 pictures – this is the minimal number of pictures (frames) you need for that video. So let’s say that you’re promoting your 2 minutes video with a slogan, that you took 100 000 pictures for that. Always the first thing that comes to my head is “what happened to the other 97 000 pictures? It went to trash?”. Of course, for some things you need so many pictures. So, as I said, the number of pictures taken for the project doesn’t mean anything, it won’t tell you whether the film is good or bad. I think it was suprising a few years back, when timelapse technique wasn’t such popular, not now, with cheap hard drives and everything . Sorry for that, I had to explain myself 😉
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Project stats
My first deadline for shooting was June 2018. I needed to get the sunrise in Gdańsk then and everything else could be taken before that. Of course it wasn’t that easy and the production took about 3 months longer. It’s good that I could edit the footage during that, because without already edited 90% of the film in September I don’t think I would finish it in 2018. And I really wanted to finish it before the 100th anniversary of the Polish Independence Day (11th November). Here are some stats I was collecting during the project:
- 14 months – time spent from the idea and planning to publication of the film
- 20 shooting days between 21.10.2017 and 23.09.2018 (11 months)
- 7500 km travelled across the country
- countless hours of planning and post production 🙂
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Basically it’s my third big flow motion hyperlapse project (I don’t count smaller projects here), and here’s the order of them:
- Bielsko-Biała in motion [2015] – a film showcasing my hometown. It was a natural place to start and test my abilities in that technique, as I live in a very nice city (however not that well known as Cracow for example) and I was pretty much a beginner in all of this, also I didn’t have money to spend for traveling, accomodation etc. That’s the first video I made after watching Rob Whitworth’s ‘Barcelona Go‘ video, which inspired me to try that technique. From that time, with a great inspiration I was trying to develop my own voice in this technique. I’m sure some of you can easily recognize my style in flow motion technique 😉
- Panta Rhei Wrocław [2016] – in 2016 I felt like I should make such a video about some bigger city. It’s much easier to plan such production in a very well known city, so this one was way harder for me. All the details on the production are included in the linked blog post about this film.
- Explore Poland [2018] – in 2017 I was thinking about two things. Either make a flow motion video about some big city abroad, probably Prague, or make a film showing my whole country. As you see the second idea won. Probably one of the reasons to choose that one was that in 2018 Poland is celebrating 100th anniversary of the Independence Day, which is a great occasion to make a video!
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As the first idea came to me, I’ve started writing possible locations on my whiteboard. It’s funny when I watch it after all that time, because I used about 1/3 of the locations and the video is longer than I planned in the first place. Then I started contacting locations. For such film, as it was a personal project and I didn’t have a budget to rent the locations, we needed to know where we can film and then figure out the scenario. There were easier and harder locations to reach. Sometimes, I wasn’t able to contact the location at all. In total I exchanged about 250 email and dozens of phone calls with different locations.
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Gear used
Here’s the list of the gear I used in the film (includes referral links – I earn a small percentage of your purchase):
- Sony A6300 + Sigma MC11 adapter,
- Panasonic GH4 + Metabones Speedbooster,
- Phantom 3 Advanced,
- Lenses: Sigma 10-20mm, Sigma 18-35mm, Canon 18-55mm, Tamron 55-200mm, Sigma 150-600mm,
- Gimbal: Moza Aircross > BUY HERE with a 5% discount code: TOMASZ
- Tripods: Benro A2970F, Manfrotto Befree Live
- Motion control equipement: Syrp Genie + 2x Genie Mini,
- Syrp Magic Carpet 160cm slider
- Feelworld Master MA5 on-camera monitor > BUY HERE
- Yongnuo 300 LED light
- Underwater shot: A7S, 28-70mm lens, Meikon housing, Spider Rig
If you want to really dive into the production process of the film, you can check out Explore Poland Director’s Commentary, a video lesson on my freshly built e-learning platform. I explain there every shot and every transition of the film showing also the struggles we had during the production and how we managed to solve them. Check it out here: Explore Poland Director’s Commentary
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If you’re interested in Timelapse photography, feel free to join my Facebook group: http://facebook.com/groups/timelapse.hyperlapse
SCULPTURE SHOT
For the last (sculpture) shot for this film I asked my friend Michał, who is a hobbist, but very talented sculptor, to make a sculpture that refers to freedom. As I worked with him many times before (we even run a Youtube channel together) I knew I can trust him on that. For the actual shot we went to Gubałówka, Zakopane to get the view on Tatra mountains and we spent there 2 days and in total 17 hours of carving. Here’s a short video about that on our channel, it’s a little bit longer than coverage in the making of video.
Title design
In such project, I wanted to pay attention to every detail. Title design looks pretty simple, but choosing the fonts wasn’t random. I wanted to connect somehow the title design to the subject of the film. There are two fonts used: Antykwa Półtawskiego and Lato. Both are made by Polish designers. Let’s start with the first one: Antykwa Półtawskiego was designed in 1923-1928, so a few years after Polish regained independence (1918), by Adam Półtawski. According to Wikipedia, it’s the most recognizable font in Poland and it’s called ‘Polish national font’. On the other hand we have Lato. It’s a popular modern font designed by Łukasz Dziedzic in 2010. This way the title combines old and new, classic and modern.
What are my plans for the future?
I’m not sure yet 😉 For sure I need to have some rest after this project, as it was very exhausting at the end. For sure I want to create more blog content. Last months I was so busy with the project that there were no new posts very often. I have some gear to review on my shelf 😉
I’m also thinking about some documentary film heavily filled with timelapse footage, but let’s see what happens. I have this idea for a few months, but on purpose I didn’t do anything about it to focus entirely on the Explore Poland project. For the new project there is always some excitation, and I didn’t want it to live over my main project for this year. I did a few smaller projects this year while working on the Explore Poland project, but they were all the quick ones, not like a documentary. I think one of the most interesting projects besides Explore Poland was a smartphone hyperlapse video from Krakow: Krakow Main Square – a Hyperlapse Walk + Making Of. On the other hand I want to do something that includes travelling, maybe a individual video, some series around different places. We will see 🙂
Thanks for reading this to the end! 🙂 It’s a pretty long article. As I said, if you want to know more about Explore Poland project check out Director’s Commentary. As always I encourage you to follow my blog. You can enable notifications (little red bell in the bottom left corner), subscribe to my mailing list or just like me on Facebook 🙂
2 Comments
Chlernie dobry kawał ciężkiej roboty!
Gratulacje!
Świetna sprawa !!! Szacun.