Let’s put it this way: If you are not watching the 11 part series on Planet Earth then you are really missing something. Even as an amateur naturalist, I’ve seen things that are absolutely amazing. Please take a moment and peruse the site, it’s quite amazing.
Anyway, I was watching the episode on the Jungle, (my wife and I have seen them all thus far) and each episode shows time lapse photography. We’ve all seen time lapse photography, the camera is stationary and the display infront of us moves over time. A seedling growing, or the sun going from one side of the screen to the other.
My question, is how the heck do they make a moving time lapse? I’ve seen panaramic and circular time lapses’ in this documentary, some things I’ve never seen before.
So comments on the filming and on the show itself would be appreciated…
My guess is that the simply use a dolly or tripod arrangement where they can move the camera by a precise amount between frames – remember that for time-lapse, you don’t have the camera constantly rolling; there may be several seconds between images. I imagine it’d be a similar technique to doing a moving shot with stop-motion animation.
(Now, probably somebody on the SDMB with actual experience and knowledge in the field will come along and correct my half-baked layman answer.)
Sounds like a great show. I always loved nature documentaries.
As Baldwin says, it doesn’t require a hugely complicated set-up. Rather than keeping the camera in one fixed position and taking a shot every x amount of time, you just have it mounted on a movable framework that allow movement along the desired path. You move the camera the same distance between each shot, and when the film is run at normal speed, the camera appears to be moving smoothly.
What I find cleverer are those shots where the camera appears to pan around an object that is frozen in time, like in the Taco Bell adverts, among many others.
They use special multi-lens cameras that fire simultaneously from several viewpoints around the action. Then frames from each lens are assembled together to give the impression of movement.
I saw a making of documentary on one of Attenborough’s series - The Private Life Of Plants - the camera is mounted on a motorised track and is controlled by computers - there is more than one axis of movement - it can dolly/pan/zoom/tilt. For one shot consisting of a woodland scene with bluebells growing and flowering, they had to try to predict whether they would bloom at the right time when the camera was passing them.
There was one of those shots in the first episode, the one about the North and South pole. The voiceover was speaking about how once the sun comes up, it’s up for 24 hours. The shot during this v-o was of a 360 degree panorama following the sun’s course as it moved vertically for the entire day, just above the horizon. The entire shot, the sun remained centered in the frame. I thought it was a really cool shot.
Let me just say, that The Private Life of Plants was the best nature documentary I have ever seen and I would rank it above Planet Earth. The photography, although not HD, is absolutely stunning.
**A Year Along the Abandoned Road** is a time-lapse film that (a) moves over the course of 1.5 miles and (b) covers an entire year. The linked article explains in great detail the mechanics and logistics of doing such a shot (which, like the PE material, is almost completely a nature shot, with almost no people in it).
Here’s an excerpt from the film (used in an a-ha music video; members of the band have been superimposed over the original footage, but it still gives you a good idea of how the film looks)
