Seamless Hyperlapse Sequences – “Future is Bright” [MAKING OF]

Finally I was able to make a personal timelapse project! 🙂 It’s super important to keep creating new things and keep pushing your limits. And the best way for that is a non-commercial project. You can do anything you want there. You’re not limited by the client, by anything but yourself.

The film ‘Future is bright‘ was inspired by current pandemic world situation. I didn’t want to make another film showing empty streets. I hate repeating things that have been done a thousand times. This film is something new for me. Previously, my timelapse films usually focused on the places. This time it’s a small ‘story’ that is driven by the visuals. Basically it could have been filmed in any place, even each shot from a different city, as the location is not the main point in this film. Location is not the idea that binds everything together. The story I introduced with the voiceover is.

And this story is a message for everyone who’s feeling sad, lonely, because of the pandemic or any other reason. I wanted it to be as universal as possible, not stricly Covid19 related. And the message is: don’t worry, eventually everything’s gonna be okay.

To learn more about my techniques and see frame-by-frame analysis of my award winning films, join Hyperlapse Academy, the best place to learn everything about timelapse & hyperlapse. We’ve got over 6 hours of very well-organised video lessons and the course is still growing!

The technique

Of course, technically the most interesting part is the flow motion sequence. I’ve created a video tutorial about the flow motion technique based on this film, so feel free to check it out 🙂

Filming technique is very important for me when I shoot a project. This time I wanted to combine three things:

• Motion Control Timelapse – focusing here especially on shadows movement, for the dark part of the film. The movement there is fairly slow, especially compared to hyperlapse shots. This emphasizes the shade movement, the darkness. The main idea is to create a contrast between these dark, sad moments and the following part, the ‘bright’, happy part.
• Flow motion hyperlapse – a flow motion sequence, that shows very dynamic, good looking and bright city scenery. We avoid shade here, we have fast camera movement and to emphasize the contrast to motion control part – seamless transitions.
• FPV drone shots (‘racing’ drone) – something I’ve been diving into for a few months now. I love the idea of combining hyperlapse with FPV drone shots. I haven’t seen this has been done before and I think it looks awesome! This part isn’t supposed to be a third part of the film with different meaning, it’s a part of flow motion sequence. When I first saw the FPV footage I felt like it could connect very well with my hyperlapse shots. And after this project I can say it does 🙂

What is FPV drone?

FPV drones are getting quite popular these days. They have some basic differences when compared to the drones we know the most, which I’ll be calling DJI drones for simplification. I mean, these plastic drones with gimbals, focused on filming usually slow and precise shots, from high altitude and not too close to obstacles. Racing drones are usually smaller, you fly it with goggles and they have video and control latency reduced to give you as much precision as possible. Also, they fly way faster and much more dynamically than ‘DJI’ type drones. If you want to learn more about FPV drones let me know, I can show you my path from 0 to my current level of FPV piloting 🙂

Thank you for staying to the end of this article 🙂 Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about these techniques. Also, share your flow motion sequences, I would love to see them. Post them in my Timelapse & Hyperlapse Facebook group! 🙂 We’ve got there already over 7000 members interested in shooting videos frame by frame.