Capturing a Time Lapse

Creating a time lapse is always an interesting project for a filmmaker to take part of. Taking a few hours worth of time and making it only a few minutes creates quite a cool and interesting effect.

Time lapses are usually created by using a special camera or software that records a series of frames ever so often. For example you could set your camera to record for only 5 seconds every 30 seconds. This ratio can be adjusted to make a time lapse longer or shorter. By only recording for a set length you can essentially take an hour and turn it into a 5 minute video.

To create a cool looking time lapse you will need a video camera (iSight can work too), tripod, Mac, firewire cable, and a subject that will change slowly over time. Great subjects include the sky, plants, etc.

If you don’t have a camera that has a built in time lapse mode you will need to use your Mac as a capture device. To do this connect a Firewire cord from your camera to your Mac. The first piece of software I recommend using for capturing, is iMovie. Once you have iMovie launched go into capture mode and click on the switch to camera mode icon. Now select Time Lapse… from the drop down menu. Up will pop a window where you can set the frame capture speed. From here you can record your time lapse straight into iMoive.

Another app thats great for time lapses is Gawker. Gawker works similar to iMovie, but has a few more features for capturing. The downside to Gawker is that you can only capture time lapses at 320x240 or 640x480, while iMove can capture SD and HD time lapses.

- Elliott Cost