I’ve got a new hyperlapse video for you guys! 🙂 This is my last personal project before the Explore Poland video, which I’ve already mentioned a few times on this blog. In this article you’ll find details about the gear and techniques used to create this flow motion short hyperlapse.
If you’re interested in winning some cool stuff including Moza Mini-Mi gimbal, check out my Timelapse Challenge. All the details how to win you can find in the blog post: https://beyondthetime.net/win-moza-minimi-gimbal-in-my-timelapse-challenge-1/
Now, make sure you watch the video, so you know what I’m talking about 😉
I live fairly close to Kraków, about 2h drive. It’s one of the most famous polish cities abroad. If you haven’t heard of it, make sure to check it out 🙂 So, considering how close I live to that beautiful location it’s weird that I haven’t shoot there anything before (well, I did shoot there for Explore Poland, but it’s not released yet).
I wanted to shoot one more thing this summer, some quick, very dynamic and full of different kinds of shots project. There is one more thing that’s special about this project – the gear I used.
In this project I wanted to show, that in the hyperlapse it’s pretty much all about the idea, not the gear. So, thanks to Sony Mobile Poland I got their new flagship model Xperia™ XZ2 which I used for this project. This whole hyperlapse was taken with a phone 😉
Why I shot it with a phone having a few camera laying on the desktop? Because I can 🙂 I believe that giving myself such restriction in a project is very educative. Recently I made a video that consists of only motion control shots from my city >> Motion Control Time! Spring Timelapse Video
That’s also a kind of restriction, that I use just one technique. In this case it was a very specific camera and just one location – the main square. Not the whole city or any bigger area. That’s one of the reasons we were able to finish it so fast. And for the camera – I always say that you can use pretty much any camera and get satysfying results if you do it well.
In filmmaking there are some people that are more concerned about your gear than about your skills. But you can easily rent a camera, however the experience and skill can’t be replaced. Of course the fact I made this video with a phone doesn’t mean that from now on I would use only that gear. Proper cameras are easier to use for such techniques. There are two things I feel were better in the phone if compared to a regular dslr/dslm camera:
- Lovely 960fps slow motion video (the coin shot). We get less than a 1second recording in that frame rate, but the quality in good light conditions is surprisingly good 🙂
- Built in high quality screen. It was much easier to use phone screen to aim the reference point in hyperlapse than the camera monitors. Phones are brighter and have higher resolution 😉
Here’s the full gear list used for this film:
- Sony Xperia™ XZ2 smartphone
- Moza Mini-Mi smartphone gimbal (check out my review: Affordable Smartphone Gimbal Moza Mini-Mi – First Impression)
- Benro tripod
- Spider Rig to get two hands grip for a handheld shot
- Irix gelatine ND filters
The project was shot in one day – about 8h of shooting. Post production took about 4 days. That’s very quick, especially for shooting. Of course, I had everything planned before. I used Google Earth as usually, however I’ve been to Krakow main square a few times so I know how it looks like. That helped me in planning, however it’s always challangeing when you reach the location and there is some renovation of some part (so it’s covered all the way) or there is some stage in the middle of the main square. For us it wasn’t too bad, however I had to change one shot/transition to hide the ugly renovation part 😉
The gimbal was just to help in hyperlapses, especially in stabilization. That’s my no. 1 way of shooting hyperlapses: gimbal mounted on a tripod, both with a camera and a phone.
The film contains also some stop motion. I mean the newspaper/paper plane shot and the coin shot. If you follow my work you know that I love to combine stop motion with timelapse photography. It’s always challenging for the model, but fortunately Ania was very patient 🙂 You can check out how it was made in the ‘making of’ video. Both the coin and the paper plane needed some frames added in post – we had very strict schedule to shoot everything within 1 day.
I used a third party camera app (Camera FV5) to shoot that, just to get more types of grids overlays. In native app we get only rule of thirds grid. Even though the app shows that the Raw DNG function is compatible with that phone I couldn’t turn it on. I finished using PNG files. I wrote an email to the app support about it but I didn’t get any response.
How do you like the video? Do I encourage you to shoot something? 😉 don’t forget to join my timelapse challenge so you will be able to win cool prizes! There are some very cool projects coming up on this blog. Besides the Explore Poland project, there is also a complete timelapse and hyperlapse course, in which I teach my techniques and ways of shooting. If you want to get an early birds access to that with a special discount (available only for the pre-orders) join my mailing list. I’ll let you know as soon as the course will be ready 😉
You can also join me in my Facebook group: http://fb.com/groups/timelapse.hyperlapse. See you next time!
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