This is a particularly long time lapse, squelching about nine hours of a day into less than a minute of screen time. I do plan on trying others.
For this particular one there were some specific challenges.
One – how many frames did we need? There wasn’t a whole lot of concrete information to go with. I didn’t know how long the work day for the subjects was going to be, nor how long the client wanted the final video. Estimating a dawn till dusk day, and shooting for about a minute of footage. The day was a bit shorter, which accounts for the missing five seconds of final footage.
Since the space of time was outdoors for nine hours, the light source changes position, intensity, and color temperature – which had to be constantly adjusted for in camera throughout the day. I screwed up three times that I can see in keeping the changes smooth and consistent. (They can, of course, be cleaned up in post, but why not try and nail it the first time?)
And oh yeah, doing this in four feet of snow. On a roof. I was in constant fear of my tripod blowing over, the elements freezing in the camera, water from the snow, etc, etc, etc. The camera was wrapped in a scarf, with a ‘hot hands’ chemical heat pack nestled near the battery side, which kept the first battery happy for a good five hours.
