From the course: Creating Time-Lapse Video

Setting up for the shot

From the course: Creating Time-Lapse Video

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Setting up for the shot

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- As we established, this is about a half hour to set up so obviously you don't want to watch us do it in real time. But Keith, there are several major components here. And just explain the process and we'll show folks what's involved. - Well, the first thing you want to do is you want to establish your shot. Now when you're actually using the Kessler Slider or using any kind of a time-lapse, you really want to foreground subject to move off of. This is very important. It's not just like you're taking a regular background shot. You really want something to move off of. So here we chose this cactus and then we're going to use the background, the mountains as our background subject. - I see we have two tripods here. So obviously you don't want to just set this on the ground. We need a nice stable platform, but it doesn't look like your tripods are particularly level. I guess it's okay in this case to have dramatic angles. - [Keith] And we like to go up a little bit you can create much more depth in the image. - [Host] Okay, so you tend to go at an angle to the shot so that it could be a sideways angle but by having that tilt it adds more drama, right? - Oh absolutely. And every subject's different. So you can really do whatever you feel like doing. - Okay, so we've got that placed and I see that you've got sort of a gear pulley type system, motorized. What's this piece up here at the top? - This piece right here? - Yeah. - This piece is a pan and tilt head. Usually you can just go up and down with the slider and put a ball head on top of that. But with the pan and tilt head, it allows us while we're traveling up and down to go left, right and tilt upward and down. - [Host] So you basically have two axes of motion. So you're going to have a sliding movement. - Yep. - But then you could add even more drama with the camera sweeping through the scene. - [Keith] Yeah, so I mean imagine you're at night and shooting a Joshua tree, instead of just going straight across it, you can actually now you can rotate almost entirely around it or create the illusion of rotating entirely around a subject. - That's very, very cool. So we've got all these pieces together. I see on top of the camera it looks like a control unit. Lots of wires and cables. And you play Donkey Kong with this, right? - Pretty much, yeah. - [Host] What is this giant box that we have here? - Well, these are the two Oracle controllers. One of the Oracle controllers actually moves the speed of the slider unit itself. And then the other one controls the pan and tilt head. - So, do you need two people to operate this? - Usually, yeah. I usually just- - Okay, I guess it's kind of hard to sit there with two controllers. Left, I meant right. - Well, one person can't operate it very easily, yeah. - Okay, so we have a joystick type unit. It looks a lot like a traditional video game joystick with a few extra buttons. But are you manually operating this live or do you have to program it? - Well, you actually program it. What you do is you pick your start point and you set your composition and then you pick your endpoint, you set your composition and then you actually use this to program the in between, you program, the speed, all that stuff. - Okay, so in other words, as it's moving, since this is not a moving video shot, it's going to go ahead and it's going to do subtle movements. It has to stop along the way? - Yeah, we actually do shoot, move, shoot. So let's say it actually shoots about 500 photographs and it'll go about a millimeter every photograph. - Wow, that's a high precision motor there. That's probably one of the main factors of the cost. Now what is the second unit controlling? - The second unit controls the pan and tilt access for the the pan and tilt head. - And are there any ways to actually control the camera? Can you do ramping in the camera or can you make any adjustments while it's recording? - Well, actually if you use aperture priority that way you can get the holy grail shot where the sun actually rises through a time-lapse. Those are extremely difficult to get but that's the only real way. - Alright well, very, very cool. We've got all these pieces set up and I think what people are going to want to see next is how you actually program the move. So I'm going to step out of the way and let's get you in position and just walk people through the process of key framing this. And this sounds like it's a lot like animation, maybe like After Effects where you set a start and end position? Alright, cool. Let me get out of the way and let Keith do his thing.

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