We’ve completed another sequential timelapse film in the Timespace series! This one is called “Winter Stars, Sun Chase Moon” due to the timing of moonset and sunrise we captured on some of the days featured in this film.
Watch it here! Be sure to view it on a big screen with the lights down and the sound turned up on a nice high-fidelity stereo system (ditch those earbuds!) if you can.
One of our goals with this film was to continue the improvisational approach to combining visuals with music. Once we had the final cut locked, we found a piece of music that was the appropriate length as well as felt to be the right mood for the visuals. Once again, we were surprised how well the musical composition matched up with the visual elements within each timelapse capture.
The music for this piece is the first movement (I. Un poco sostenuto – Allegro) from Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68 by Johannes Brahms. The piece was performed by the Musopen Symphony, and the recording is released to the public domain.
Another goal for this film was to continue to play around with timing our timelapse captures using the GoPro Hero 8. The regular timelapse feature and the “nightlapse” feature result in much different durations of finished sequences. This is partly due to the automated nature of the interval capture for the “nightlapse” feature.
We want to get to the point were we can manage to capture the same duration of sunrise, midday, sunset, and the best part of any night sky on each day (and night) of the year, building up to creating a film that is at least one year of real time in duration. Most likely, this would need to be serialized into at least 12 “month” films, or perhaps even 52 “week” films. Either way, that is one of our big end goals: Seamless day and night capture of timelapse footage from one place for indefinite periods of time.
Believe it or not, two of the biggest obstacles for seamless capture are changing the battery and swapping out the memory card in the GoPro camera. We’ve come up with a mounting technique that avoids blocking access to the camera door, but it’s still a delicate situation where we must exercise caution.
We did not apply any color filters or effects of any kind to this footage. The only modification was a correction for wide angle lens distortion in the GoPro.
One of the things that pleased us most about this film was the completely unintentional capture of the sunrise chasing the crescent moon. This lovely surprise has motivated us to pay even more attention to the timing of celestial bodies in relation to the movements of Earth. It’s pretty easy to see that there are tons of passenger jets flying overhead, but wouldn’t it be cool to capture the space station in action??
Here’s one more still frame from the film, taken from one of the night sequences.
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PS. If you haven’t done so already, please take some time to check out the still photography work of Wolfbird Studios founder Ben Erlandson. Thanks!