DSLR Camera Essentials: Film & Edit Stunning Timelapse Videos

1. Introduction: Hey, guys, I'm Drew Geraci. I'm based out of Washington DC, and I'm a Timelapse Photographer. I've been doing it professionally for the last six years, and it's taken me all over the world. I've shot for Netflix. If you ever seen the television show called House of Cards, you've probably seen my work. I've also traveled across the world, all over the place, meeting and seeing all different types of things. It's really been inspiring. One of the things I want to do is help inspire you to do the same thing. So, the project for this class is going to be pretty exciting. Just like House of Cards, I want you to go out and really showcase your city. I want you to either show in a bright, shining light or a dark, gritty atmosphere. I think timelapse is a perfect element to add to your toolbox because it adds an extra bit of flair to your project. It can bend time, it can transition between day and night, it can really lend a lot of new elements. So, today, we're going to be talking about stationary timelapse, which is basically just a tripod and a camera. We're also going to be talking about 3-axis motion control timelapse, which will require a slider and a 2 axis head. What's great about this timelapse project is, you're doing it yourself, which means, you can put your own spin on it. There's a lot of different variables you can add in timelapse to really stylize it and make it your own, whether you want to drag the shutter, do a lot of night photography, or even something like tilt-shift. So, a lot that you can do and a lot of ways to produce something that's new. That's what we're going to show you guys how to do. You really don't have to have an extensive background in photography. You really just need to know the basics of how to operate a camera, and what I'm going to show you is, how to elaborate on those basics and really build a better foundation to utilize your camera for timelapse. You're storytelling, and as a storyteller, you want to have as many tools in your toolbox as possible. So, I think timelapse is just one of those new skills that you want to be able to have to help enhance your product. 2. Why Timelapse?: Yeah, I mean timelapse at its most simplest form, it's just the evolution of time. We're going to be seeing a passage of time taken from one moment to another moment and we're going to be able to see everything that happens in between and that's what a timelapse is. There's a lot of different things you can do with timelapse, you can shoot clouds, you can shoot people, you can shoot shadows, you can shoot cars, events and even long-term timelapses. We're able to see the evolution of spring, summer, and winter happening all at once. There's so many different things you can do with timelapse that it's almost limitless. I think some of the most stunning things you can see through timelapse are shadows and clouds. These are things that you see every day throughout your life and they're always just there, they're just kind of stagnant and you never actually see them in motion. But when you're able to look at them through the screen and see them over like a four or five hour time period, you're actually able to see them come alive. To me, being able to see shadows sweep across the land or across an old dirty television, it's really impressive to see and really inspiring because you're able to see the sun moving basically and with clouds, there're so many different formations, and so many different organic parts to it, it's just really cool to see, and the only way you can do it is with timelapse. Here's a couple of timelapse that'll show you exactly what I mean. In this shot, we're using a motion control dolly rig in Arizona and recapturing a lateral move of the cloud sweeping across the plains and a tree in the foreground moving to the left, really gives you a nice sense of perspective and depth. In this shot, we've got some really nice, beautiful clouds and what I've done is, I've taken my shutter speed and dropped it down to two seconds. So, it really flows and creates this very cinematic flowly look. In the same aspect, I've taken this shot which is a picture of LA and I've stationed it on top of a bridge and you can actually see the cars passing by and streaking underneath the bridge. For this particular shot, I used a nice two to three second interval with a one second shutter speed. One of my favorite things in the timelapse is astrophotography. In this particular scene, we had a 30 second interval where we actually had the shutter speed at about 25 seconds and you can actually see the Milky Way gliding across the screen with a really beautiful acacia tree in the foreground. One of my favorite things in timelapse are shadows. In this scene, we've got a really nice, rusty TV that's in front of a window and you can actually see the clouds sweeping across the TV, and this shot in particular was about a three hour shot. Sometimes you really want to capture unique perspectives. In this shot, we actually put a camera on the side of a New York City cab and you're able to run it all the way through town and this is one of the cooler shots, live shot, and really easy to do, just a simple camera and a suction cup grid. Some of the most basic subjects for a timelapse are clouds, moving cars, people, shadows, events, and then just the overall elapsed time, and these are the most common things you're going to find out there, and really easy to film and fun to film too. Some of the most difficult timelapse is the film are yearlong timelapses where you're in a construction project or you're doing some type of elaborate seasonal project where you want to capture the different changes of the season. These are projects that are going to require a lot of different types of gear and a lot of time, and it also makes your camera unavailable for that period of time too. So, you have to understand that you're going to be losing your camera when you're shooting long-term timelapses, but those are by far the most difficult to do. For this particular project, I think the best way to do is to go out into your world and explore it first. This is called the scalp process. Some of the easiest elements to capture in the city, obviously it will be your people, their cars, and their architecture. If you're in a city where there aren't a lot of people, where there's not a lot of architecture, you can do the landscape. There's plenty of different varieties of whites, actually if you can get it, just showcasing your particular location. Let's talk about the three-point dynamic rule and this is something that I've kind of made up my own. But the three-point dynamic rule basically means that to create a dynamic timelapse you're going to need three different elements to timelapse there in the scene. So, the easiest way to do that is by using cloud motion, cars, people, or adding an imposed zoom, which is where you're actually going to create a motion or a movement inside of the computer. It's the easiest to do, to add a third element of motion. Sometimes though, the next step for the most or more advanced users would actually be using a motion-controlled slider. This is going to give you one of those access of motions where you can add a perspective motion or a pan or a tilt, and then utilize clouds, shadows, people, cars to add the elements. So, the more elements you have of timelapse, in your timelapse, the more dynamic and more rich and robust it feels. So, a lot of people will go out and they'll put their camera down and expect something to happen, but what you really want to do is you want to make sure you have a rich, dynamic range of timelapse options. So, you really want to be out there calculating and figuring out well, do I have people? Do I have cars? Do I have an event happening? You want to be able to make sure you have three of these six elements basically in your shot to produce the most dynamic shot possible. What I mean by dynamic is that it's going to be the most interesting thing for people to watch because no one wants us to watch a stop sign for four minutes, its boring. You want to be able to see clouds moving, people moving, cars moving, light sweeping across your subject, you want to have all of these different elements working together to produce something that's really cool, really fun, and really inspiring. Yeah, I think going through this process, you're going to maybe run into a few issues shooting timelapse. Some of the most common issues that you're going to have are types of flicker, wobble, different types of white balance issues, then you're also going to have problems with maybe post-production interval. So, it's really crucial to make sure that you have all of these different types of elements locked down before you start because once your timelapse starts and something happens in the middle and it screws up, you're pretty much toast, you've got to start all over again, which really sucks. So, what I want to show you guys is how to prepare yourself so you don't have these issues going into your timelapse and when it comes out, you're good to go. So, some of the issues that you're going to find are, if you leave on any type of auto-focus or any type of vibration reduction on your lens, you're going to come up with some artifacts and you're going to be also seeing some wobble, and some wiggle, and some jiggling in your shots. This is going to produce an unstable shot and here's an example of one that I've used. This is something that I shot six years ago, when I left vibration reduction onto my lens and as you watch this clip, you can actually see the lens popping up and down and that's because the lens is actually trying to communicate as it's sitting on a tripod, it's actually trying to level itself out, but it's really just causing more vibration and shake inside the camera, four hour timelapse and you don't want that. One of the main issues that you're going to have is making sure everything auto is off on your camera. If you leave anything that's white balance or shutter speed or aperture or even auto-focus, all of these different types of auto features are actually going to screw your timelapse up. So, you really want to make sure they're all turned off. Yeah, I think wind is one of those factors that you don't necessarily think about when you're shooting a timelapse, but wind can be really damaging to your shots. So, you really want to make sure that you've got a strong foundation and a really sturdy tripod. So, what you're going to do, is you can either weight down your tripod to make sure that the camera doesn't shake or use a very sturdy tripod. These are the types of things that are really going to be crucial to create a really nice timelapse. Another problem that can arise is flicker. Flicker can be caused by a lot of different varieties. It can be caused by different types of light entering your lens from different angles. Let's say, a car light is directly in front of your lens and it comes in, that's going to cause flicker. Other times too is if you're using a non-manual, and so this is anything that has an auto-focus feature. The aperture never actually goes back to the same location twice. So, after the shutter clicks, there might be a small, minute difference in your aperture and that little difference is actually going to cause flicker because the exposure is going to change just slight enough for the exposure to change. You'll notice that in your timelapse because what's going to happen is you'll just get this really constant flicker going back and forth and that's because your aperture is firing and not closing or opening to the same spot every time. Timelapse is one of those things that really can draw someone in that's new to the community or new to photography because it's something that's really interesting and a lot of people love watching it because you don't see it every day. It's something that's new and it's fresh and it's always interesting to watch what's going on because there's so many different details in a timelapse you don't necessarily notice throughout your day. It's one of those things that you maybe you fall in love with. I fell in love with it and I love timelapse, but you want to make sure that you take care when you're setting your camera. So, it's really important that you use the right settings and that you have proper weight management and gear when you do your shot. When I first started out doing timelapse, I bought the cheapest gear I could find, I bought like a 5D Mark II and a really cheap lens. I went out there and timelapse, then I was carrying around a giant battery pack to power all my equipment and it was just one of those things where like, this will never catch on, like who would want to do this in their right mind, and you get better at it and you're like, "Oh, okay, this is kind of fun. Let me go out there and buy some more lenses and new cameras." It gets really exciting and really fun. 3. Equipment: Some of the equipment you guys are going to need for this project are going to be obviously the basics: a camera, a tripod, an intervalometer, and then a laptop that has a Creative Suite on it. So we're going to be needing a Lightroom, After Effects, and Premiere Pro. For lenses, we want to be using wide-type lenses, any within between 14 and 35 millimeters. So, you can use a zoom lens, or you can use a fixed prime, but you definitely want something that's going to be wide and able to capture a lot of landscape. For those who don't know, an intervalometer basically regulates the intervals at which the camera fires. So when you use the intervalometer, we want to make sure that we choose the right settings for the scene that we're in. So the intervalometer is basically going to be regulating when the camera fires, and how often the camera fires. For advanced users, we want to be using a 3-Axis rig. And what that is, is it's a slider and then a two axis head, that's able to pan and tilt, and we want to be able to utilize this with time lapse. You want to make sure that you have something that's able to use intervals and also move at the same time. And of course, the standard things always apply. You want a backpack and plenty of batteries, because time lapse sucks up a ton of battery juice. The gear that I use is based on the reliability and the flexibility. So I like to use a lot of prime lenses, I like to shoot wide open at 1.4, 2.8. Then, I also want to make sure that you've got a camera that has a really nice dynamic range on it, because when we get to the post-production, we want to make sure that we will pull a lot of those highlights, shadows, and mid tones out. So, I like to use the Sony A7S and the A7 R2. Then for the intervalometer, you can get a really cheap one off at Amazon for like 15 bucks, and they're amazing. We prefer to use shoot and newer, but they're really inexpensive and very easy to use. As far as different types of motion control equipment goes, we like to use the Kessler system because it's really robust, and very easy to use, and very user friendly, so I'd really highly recommend using that. If you're really interested in learning more about the gear, the best thing to do is go out and research the gear, you can go on sites like BNH, or Amazon, and just reading the user reviews are, or go to some of the technical sites like timescapes.org, and go to the forms there, and really listen to what other timelaps photographers are using to produce the shots you want to use, because every lens is different, and every camera is different, and each of those provide a different combination. So, it's really going to be up to you to decide whether or not you want to use Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax, whatever it is, it's your choice. I've also provided some links for you in the class resources. 4. Scouting and Storyboarding: All right guys. For this project, when you go out scouting, you want to make sure that you have all of the elements available at hand. So, you want to go out, you want to go find that architecture, you want to find the people, you want to go find the cars, or whatever your subject is, and make sure it's there. You also want to set the scene up. In this kind of aspect, you're going to be going out. Let's just say for instance, you're going to be going shooting at a cafe. You want to go down to the cafe, go inside, scout it out, see where the best placement of a camera will be, and also ask for permission. Because if you're going to be inside of any kind of private residence, you want to make sure that you have permission to shoot there first. Otherwise, if you're shooting on a public sidewalk or out in the countryside, you want to go out there visit it first before you shoot to really plan out the shot as it is. So, you want to check the composition, make sure you have a good foreground, middle ground, and background. You want to make sure that your time lapse elements are out there. So, if you're going out on a wet day or a dark day, maybe you should go out on a sunny day and see what it looks like. So, you want to change or you want to be able to see what the different types of atmospheres are during the course of a week or so. I think, the biggest issue that's going to arise is if you don't actually go out and scout. Because you really want to make sure that everything you want to shoot is there and available. If you don't scout, you could wind up finding yourself in a position where you don't have enough time to shoot, or you don't have the ability to shoot, because there's construction going on, or maybe something moved or something happened. So, you really want to make sure that your spot is available and accessible to shoot. All right. So, after scouting, the fun part is actually going back in story boarding. So, you're going to take everything that you've seen when you went out on the scout, and you're going to jot it down in a piece of paper. You don't have to do this all the time, but it's a really great way to create a flow of imagery, and discuss the flow of your story. So, what we're going to be doing is, using a storyboard to kind of sketch out what we saw, when we were out shooting. Don't take a storyboard as being something that's really hard and cumbersome to use. It's actually really easy and super simple. All you really need are four different blocks, and you just go in and you jot down what you think your projects going to be. So, this could just be laying out. I want a wide shot over here. The next shot is going to be a medium shot of this cafe, and the next shot is going to be a tight shot of people talking or chatting at a cafe. This is just going to allow you to go back when you actually go back and shoot, to have a better understanding of where you need to position your camera, and how you want the flow of the product to go. It's not hard to do. It's super easy and it can be fun too, because you can actually go back later on, and go, "Oh hey, I remember wanting to shoot this shot. Let's go back and shoot that shot." And it's really helpful in maintaining a proper shooting order as well. Before you start a project, you really want to make sure that you have a cohesive understanding of the beginning, the middle, and the end of your story. Now, I don't necessarily do this all the time, but it's great for beginners and intermediate to use this, because it allows you to show the flow and progression of your story. One of the things I really like doing is being able to tell myself what to shoot, how to shoot it, and what I've seen from my past scout shot. So, I'm able to take that information, and compile it into my scout sheet or my storyboard. It's really not hard to do. It's really easy. You're just going to go in, you're going to jot down some simple ideas anc saying, "Well, hey, I've got a wide shot here, the city I want to showcase, and then I want to move in, and push in with my camera into the city, and show a different aspect." That's going to be a medium shot. Then, we're going to go into another shot that basically gets even deeper into it, and then we come back out, and that's our end. We've got a beginning, and a middle, and an end. It's a basic story that we have here. Here's an example of one that I've used. When we were shooting for the NFL, we wanted to showcase the city of New Orleans. So, we've got a really nice large wide landscape shot here. I've also pushed in and we're into the city now, and then we're also showcasing a little scene inside of one of the many shops. So, it's really intimate and then we pull back out, and that's the end. You can see that in this clip. 5. Basic Setup: Now that you guys know what the project is, we're going to go ahead and set up our camera to make sure everything is perfect for the time lapse. To shoot a basic time lapse again, all we're going to really need is an intervalometer, a camera, and a tripod. So, we're going to go ahead and change these settings now to make sure that everything is perfect before we actually go out and shoot. All right, from here, we're going to go ahead and take our camera out of auto mode, and we're going to go ahead and switch it to manual. That's usually doesn't need to buy a giant. Then we're going to go ahead and change all of our auto settings and make them standard settings. So, we're going to go ahead and turn off our auto ISO. Then we're going to go ahead and change that to say 250 ISO. Then we're going to go through our white balance, change our white balance from auto to daylight. But this could change depending on what you're scene is and where you're at. Another function you really want to make sure is turned off is the motor drive. So, if you've got a high speed continuous shooting, or multiple frame, we're going to go ahead and change that to just a single frame shooting. It's also important to note you really want to make sure that your auto focus and any kind of image stabilization that you have is turned off as well, because you really don't want anything auto on, or else it could really damage your shot when it comes time for post-production. So, now that everything auto is off, we can go ahead and start in our intervalometer. So, when you're shooting, you also want to make sure that your camera is set to raw. It can retain a lot more data, and you are going to be able to go in and pull out all of those shadows, mid-tones and highlights everything that's essential to making a great time lapse. So, you really want to make sure that everything is raw, don't shoot in jpeg. These settings are going to be universal in any DSLR that you're using. So, you should be able to find your auto ISO, your white balance, your shutter speed, your aperture. Just make sure all that is turned to manual mode, and then you just go from there. All right. Now, that we've set up our camera, we're going to go ahead and set up our intervalometer, which is the most important part to a time lapse. The subject that we shoot is really going to determine what our interval is. Today, we're going to be shooting some clouds and people. Clouds and people both move really fast. So, we're going to be choosing the interval that's fast as well. So, the interval is going to be anywhere between one and three seconds. So, for this with clouds and people, I'm going to go ahead and set it to three seconds. So, what I'm going to do, I'm going to go ahead, go into my intervalometer, go over to my interval section, and we have the ability to change it anytime we want. So, I'm going to go ahead and choose three seconds, and what that means is every three seconds the camera is going to fire and take one photo. You have to think about this in the context of film, it's 24 frames equals one second. We're going to need a lot of frames to create a small piece of footage. So, we're going to go ahead and set up our time lapse to shoot 399 frames, and what that's going to give us is about 16 seconds worth of footage. That's footage that we can use and chop off, and make it any size we want. All right, great. Now that we've gone ahead and set our intervalometer and our camera, we can go ahead and get to shooting. Let's do it. 6. Advanced Setup: All right guys, when we're out shooting, I'm going to be using the second shooter, motion control time lapse rig right here, and it's designed by Kessler. What this is, is a pan tilt combination, it's really going to allow us to take our time lapse as to the next level. We can easily set our in and out frames to produce a really nice pan, a tilt, or a combination of the both. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you guys just the very basics of using the controller and setting up a shot. So we're going to go ahead, and enter our menu screen, where we're going to go ahead and hit on Program Move. We're going to select two keyframes, and this first point that we're going to do where it says Set First Keyframe is where we're actually going to set our first shot. So, what I want to do is, let's just say we're in a situation where we want to start from left to right. So, I'm going to go ahead and hit Shift to the left, and that's going to turn the camera to the left. Then maybe we're shooting of buildings, we want to shoot up high. So, I'm going to go ahead and hit the up arrow, which is going to tilt the camera up, and then after that, let's just say we want to come back a little bit to the right. So, we're going to adjust the shot as necessary, and I think that's a great starting location. So, after we've shot or after we've selected our first keyframe, we're going to go ahead and hit Enter. That's going to lock that keyframe in place. Now, what we want to do is we want to take the camera and move it to the next position. So, I'm going to go ahead and hit shift, and to the right, and move it to where I think I really like the next shot to be. All right. This time maybe we're at a building we want to pan down, so I'm going to go ahead and tilt the camera down, hitting the down arrow, and that's going to set it there. So, I want to go and hit enter. That's going to set the keyframe, and I really to make sure that the shot programmed correctly. So, going to go ahead and hit up Loop/Scrub right at the top here, and what that's going to do, is it's going to play back in real time the move that we just created. It's very easy to do. I'm going to leave all the settings alone. The time can change to whatever you want. I usually like to keep it under ten seconds. So, let's just hit nine seconds, and then hit Run. What it's going to do, is it's going to go back to that first keyframe that we had, and then run through it so, we can actually see what the move looks like. We hit Run, camera moves, and this isn't the full move, so we have to wait a second. All right. Here's the move. So, it's a really nice, elegant, smooth panning tilting, combination. That's the move. We would do this over the course of maybe an hour, two hours, three hours. It's all depending upon what our subject is. So, I'm going to go ahead and enter to stop the looping, I'm going to hit Menu, and then we're going to go down to Time Lapse. I'm going to hit Enter, I prefer using Shoot/Move/Shoot, which just means that the camera is going to fire, and then it's going to move, and then it's going to fire, and then it's going to move. This just makes a little bit smoother shot in my opinion. Now, we want to set our exposure and our delay, and this is just like the intervalometer that we talked about before. So, for the exposure, the exposure is going to be whatever you set your camera to be. So, let's just say that we're using our ND filters, and we're going to make it a one second exposure. So, I'm going to change this exposure from half of the second, to a full second, and then the delay between firing, I want that to be two seconds. So, what this actually gives us is a three second interval, because we can combine the delay which is two seconds, plus the exposure which gives us a full interval of three seconds. Now, we want to determine how many photos we want to take. For this project, again, we'll just try 400 photos. This is going to give us a run time of 19 minutes and 58 seconds. So, we're going to go ahead, and hit down and then click on Run Time lapse. I'm going to leave my Ramp at 10 percent, and then I'm going to hit Start. That's it. Your time left started, ready to roll. We got motion and control time lapse ready to go. 7. Shooting a Stationary Timelapse: Cool. All right. So, we're in Seoul right now. What we're going to be doing is we're going to go out and scout. We're going to try to find some locations to shoot. Some of the things we want to look for are people, cars, any kind of really cool-looking lighting. So, we're just going to kind of scour the city right now and then see what we can find. Let's do it. What we're looking for right now is basically just an area where we can shoot. It's got a lot of congestion, a lot of people, a lot of cars, and some really great light. So, we really need to find a good spot to do that. So we're going to go ahead and hit the city and do that. So, this intersection is perfect for filming just because there's so much traffic and so many people, a lot of motion, a lot of different elements going on here. We've got light. We've got shadow. We've got people. We've got cars. That's four elements out of six. That's really good. It means you can get a good shot. The downside is we've got a lot of construction here, it doesn't look pretty. So, we want to kind of find something that's a little more natural in its environment. So I think we're going to head down this way and see if we can find something down here. Let's go. So, one of the things you want to look for is architecture and we've got a really great example right over here. We've got old meets new. We've got a really great looking government building mixed with a nice new corner store. Those two elements can really bring together, kind of give the character and class of the city. So, I think we're going to go over there and check that out, and see if we can shoot something there. Let's go and do it. Cool. So, I think we're going to set up our timelapse shot right here. We've got a really nice depth of field back here. We've got a foreground, a middle ground, a background, and then we've also got some really nice elements of people, cars, shadows, light. It's going to make for a really nice timelapse. One of the things you gotta watch out when you're setting timelapse is to make sure you don't get up in people's ways. You want to make sure your tripod is off to the side. You want to be courteous to other people that are on the road. So, we're going to go and set up and get this timelapse rolling. Cool. So, we found our location. We're going to go ahead and set up. I got my tripod out. I'm going to go ahead and extend it all the way out because we want to be above the people and we want to be above the cars. That way, we don't get headlights or people running into our lens. You also want to make sure that you watch out for pedestrians. So, kind of see their back towards the side or out in front. That way, they can get around you. Always make sure you check your lens. Make sure there's no dust or dirt on it. Otherwise, you're going to have artifacts inside your shot. Go ahead and put our camera on. The next thing I want to do is really check out the composition. We've got all these really nice lines, architecture. We've got people. We've got cars. We've got every element that we need to create a really great timelapse. So, one thing I'm going to do is I'm going to center directly on this building in front of us since we've got two channels. We've got a left channel and a right channel of cars and a really nice stream of people. So, this seems to be a really great location. I'm going to go ahead and compose it how I think it's going need. We're also using a really wide lens so I'm able to capture everything within a really wide angle of view. So, the next step is really just to go through, make sure all your settings are correct. If you're using a lens that has autofocus or vibration reduction, you want to turn that off. Make sure everything is on manual and then really, we're all set up to start our shot. So, one of the things I want to talk about is dragging your shutter. This could be the most important part of creating a timelapse because what we want to do is create a really nice smooth cinematic type shot. The way you do that is called dragging your shutter. What that means is you're going to increase the shutter speed so it's above, say, half a second to even a second or even longer than that. What that's going to do is any motion that's on the screen is it's going to draw it out and expand and give it a nice motion blur and it comes across more fluid when you're actually putting the timelapse together. So, what I like to do is if I'm shooting people or cars is probably shoot anywhere between half of a second to a second shutter and that will allow me to have a really nice motion streak. That way, when we blend it together, it's going to have a really nice fluid motion in post-production. So, I've already set up the composition, and I've got all of my settings where I want them. What we're going to do now is pick the interval, and because we're shooting people in cars, it's going to be a really fast interval. So, I'm probably going to put at around a two or three-second interval at around 400 frames. This is going to give us about 16 seconds worth of footage. So, we'll be here for about 20 minutes shooting this shot. So, we're going to go ahead and adjust our intervalometer to what we need. Right now, I'm changing the interval to every two seconds. I want to give this 400 frames. So, one thing to always remember is to double check your settings. Go through, make sure anything that's auto is turned off and then make sure you've got the correct white balance on. Since we're shooting in the shade, I want to go ahead and throw it on the shade white balance. Since we're shooting raw, we can always change this in post but it's best to start off correct. The next thing we're going to do is just start it. So, I want to hit the start button and we're going to roll. Here we go. So, while we wait here, let's talk about cameras. I think it's really important to really get to know your camera and understand it's different functionalities and the settings that it has. One thing that I love about the Sony cameras is that they've got a really large dynamic range. Same with Nikon. We're talking 13, 14, even 15 stops of dynamic range. Some of the Canon cameras unfortunately only have around 11 stops of dynamic range and what that means is the amount of data that we can pull out of there from the raw file, it can either be a large amount or a small amount. When we use the Sony's, we're going to look at these images back in post and they're going to be a little dark. But the great thing is we can pull out all that information, all of the shadows, all the mid tones. It's going to look like daylight. So, it may look like it's just complete backlit right now. But when we bring it to post, it's going to look really great. That really signifies a really nice sensor. Anything that we're able to pull highlights, and mid tones, and shadows out of and be able to retain that data in the sky, and in the foreground, the middle ground, is perfect. So, really, when you choose a camera, you want to make sure that the camera is suitable for what you're going to be shooting, or when you're shooting, to make sure that your exposure is set properly. From my past experience, I find the best ways to actually under expose your image by at least half a stop to a full stop and what that's going to do is it's going to allow you to retain the information that's in the highlights. So, anything or anytime you've got really bright clouds, the sun's going to cascade off of it, and it really blow it out some time. So, what I tend to do is I tend to go exposed either straight for the sky or exposed one stop under from what the sky is. What that's going to do is later on in post, when we bring it back, it's going to look really nice. I'm going to be able to retain all the data that's in my shadows, in the foreground, and in the middle ground, and still have all the data in the sky. So again, it's really important to understand what kind of sensor you have on your camera. That's it. All right, our timelapse ended which means we can go ahead and finish up. So, what we're going to do now is we're going to go search the neighborhood again for another location but this time, we're going to use motion control. We're going to use a two-axes pan tilt head and that's really going to allow us to add some really cool motion to our shots. So, let's get out of here. 8. Shooting a Motion Controlled Timelapse: Okay, cool. So, we found a really nice rooftop location. We've got this really cool panoramic of the city. The clouds are looking banging right now. What we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and set up a two axis motion controlled shot. If we look off in the distance, we can see that the clouds are moving from right to left. So, we actually want to set up our motion control shot to go from left to right. So, when we actually play back the video, it's going to be a nice little parallax of motion in between there. So, it's the same setup as doing a standard timelapse. We're going to go ahead and throw on a two axis motion control head. We're going to be using the Kessler second shooter which I find is the best head out there right now. It's super easy to use, very easy to set up and it only takes a few minutes to do. So, we're going to go ahead and get this set up. So, the first we want to do is we actually want to get the head on the tripod first. So, I'm going to go ahead and mount the head. So, we're going to go ahead and mount the head. It's also important to note that we're also going to weigh down the tripod after we set up a shop because we don't want the tripod blown over. Make sure it's locked in place. All right. Make sure everything's on there tight. Lock it down. We're going to change lenses for this one because the 14 is just a little too wide. We're going to go with something a little bit tighter which is like maybe 24 or 35. This is our time lapse controller. This is basically going to be the same thing as the intervalometer. But it's also going to program the move that we want to do. What we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and set up our pan tilt heads. We're going to connect those connections to the controller. Going to attach tilt to tilt, and pan to pan. We're going to ahead program a two-frame key-frame shot. What you'll notice is that the head of the cameras are moving, and when we're sending these shots, we're going to be putting our in and out points. Since the clouds are moving to the left, we're going to go ahead and start all the way to the left and then go to the right. It's going to be your job as the photographer to kind determine where that scene is going to start and stop, and really it's just a preference. So it is important to make sure that your tripod is level. Now, I would recommend using a little bit sturdier tripod for this but since we're on a travel mode kind of way, we're going to go ahead and just use this guy. But I'm going to weigh it down with my bag after we're done setting it up. So, you can control pan tilt. I'm going to go ahead and zoom into about 35 millimeters. Make sure you check your focus. If you're using a Sony camera they've got some really nice features that show you your focal points and let you know if you're in focus. Now, they checked focus and everything is good them and go ahead and plan my shot. So for the first keyframe we're going to go ahead and start off to the left here. I want to go ahead and punch enter. And then, we're going to move the camera so that it pans all the way to the right. And then, we're going to simply go ahead and enter that. So we've set our move if you want you can always go back and check it out. What we're going to do is I'm going to run it once to see what the move looks like. And we can see to make sure it's everything we want. Want to go ahead and run it. Cameras are going to go back to beginning position and they will be able to see what looks like in real time. We get a really nice little panoramic shot here. The next thing to do is we're going to do just like we do with the stationary cameras. We're going to set up the intervals. And since we're not really capturing sunset here, we just want to capture the motion of the clouds as they are going into sunset. We're getting kind of probably use a pretty fast interval. So for this in particular we're probably going to use three to four seconds and because we know that the exposure is going to be changing and it's going to be going a little bit darker. I'm going to overexpose for one stop, and that's going to allow me to get the upper and lower levels that we need for the exposure when it comes down to process. As you can see on my camera right here, I've increased it to one stop over. That's going to compensate for the light as it's changing over the course of the next 25 minutes or so. Effectively, we have a 3.5 second interval which means every 3.5 seconds are going to be taking one shot. And what's great about the second shooter controllers, it actually tells you and calculates exactly how much time is going to be remaining in the shot. For this particular shot we've got 23 minutes and 17 seconds. What we'll do is we'll make sure that all of our camera settings are correct. We'll make sure that we've plugged in our shuttle release for the camera. And then, want to go ahead and close my bag up hear and I'm going to use it as a weight. Make sure that it's really tight and on there good. All right. Our shots are ready to go. We're going to go ahead. Make sure everything's set up that we have, anything auto's turned off. All you got to do is come down here. Hit start. Camera is going to reset back to its starting position. And then, we're good to go. Time left started we'll see how it turns out. I think one of the biggest things you have to really watch out for when you're doing a timelapse especially on a roof is the wind. Wind is going to be the biggest annoyance you have because right now we're getting a really nice cross wind that's causing the camera to shake. In post-production we're going to have to go back and add what's called a warp stabilizer and that's really just going to smooth it out and make sure it's not jittery. But it's not too bad. But always make sure that you have some kind of stabilization whether you use your backpack, sandbags, or just a really heavy duty sturdy tripod because keeping your camera vibration free is going to be the most important thing for a timelapse. If you're really interested in doing a motion control shot, you can either go out and buy a unit. Which the units cost anywhere between 600 and $1000 for a standard unit, or you can go out and rent something and that could be just a couple hundred bucks or even less than a $100. But for something like this, this unit here, for a full package you're probably looking at around a $1000 but it's going to take you from the next level from beginner to pro and what it really get allow you to do is when you couple this with a slider, you can create a nice three axis motion control move, and even stand a two axis head move is even perfect because you got pan and tilt. You can capture everything in a 360 degree bubble which is fantastic. So I really recommend going out. The Kessler second shooter is my go to timelapse control rig. And I find that it's super easy to use and very ergonomic. You can put it in any kind of backpack or case, and it's very lightweight, and it does a great job. 9. Stationary Timelapse: Part I - Lightroom: All right. Now it's time to actually process our timelapse shot. So, after you've downloaded the material, we're going to go ahead and create two separate folders for the timelapse shot. So, we did one for the motion control shot, and then one for the stationary shot. I think it's always great when you're doing any kind of project to have a really nice file system. So, what I'm going do, we're going to create a separate folder for our timelapse shots. We're going to go ahead and create one new folder for the first timelapse, we're going call it Stationary. We're going to create another folder for our motion control shot, and call it Motion Control. This is really going to help us out in the future when we're trying to figure out what shot it is, and where it is. So, we're going to go ahead and open up Stationary, and then from our card, we're just going to go ahead and drop in that information. I've already got it labeled in here on the card as a street timelapse, so I'm going to throw it in there. It's already downloaded, so we have all of our raw imagery in there right now. I'm going to do the same thing for our motion control shot. There we go, it's in there. So, the next step we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and open up Lightroom, and inside of Lightroom, we're going to import each of these sequences, and we're going to edit them individually. That way that we can actually take and manipulate the image and put the feel or style on the picture. Open up the folder project that we had, I'm just going to go ahead and drag and drop. First one's going to be Stationary just right into the main library. It's going to open up all of the images here. Then what I'm going to do is go ahead and hit Import. That's going to take all my images and lay them out for me in a nice grid layout. Then once this has completed loading, you can see in the top left-hand corner, we'll go ahead and start editing the images. Some of the things you can notice right off the back is the fact it looks a little dark. That's one thing that I really wanted to do, actually, when we were shooting is underexpose it, because if you notice the sky isn't overexposed, it's properly exposed. So, when we come into these images, I'm going to go ahead and bring up all of that information that's in the shadows, and really just make the image pop. So, it is going to be night and day between the images. So, I've already pre-processed some of the shots and exported them, but I'm going to go ahead and show you what it looks like beforehand, and we're going to edit that photo, and then apply it to everything else. So, here's our original image right here. This is what we shot. As you take a look at it you can be like, wow, the shadows are little dark, it just doesn't look that great. So, what we're going to do is we're going go ahead over to the basic menu system over here, and we're just going to play with the highlights, the shadows, the blacks, the exposure, and the contrast. So, I'm going to immediately increase the shadows quite a bit. You're going to see almost instantly the image takes a new shape. We're going to go ahead and bring down the highlights, which is going to add more detail to the sky, and I'm going to leave a little room on the end there, because what's going to happen is I'm going to increase the exposure as it's going to make it a little more vibrant. So, when you're looking at your shot, you can look up at your histogram up here and actually see where the levels are for your exposure, your shadows, your mid-tones, and your highlights. What you want to do is you want to make sure that everything's pretty much even across the board. That's going to give you a really nice robust image, whereas I'm going to increase the exposure and you're going to notice that changing, just a little bit. When I do that, let me take a look at the image, it just looks so much better. Then I'm going go ahead and adjust the white balance, play around with my white a little bit, add my blacks, and right there, we've got a pretty great finished product. Here's the before, and here's the after. So, it's a pretty stark contrast, it's really nice. It's amazing what you can do with these cameras. Especially using a camera that has a really high dynamic range, something like a Sony or a Nikon both boast upwards of 14 stops or dynamic range. Unfortunately, Canon only does about 11 stops. But, if you're in the 14 stop range, you can do so much more with your imagery when you shoot raw, and this is just a prime example of that. So, the next step from here is we're going to go ahead, I'm going to select one image, and then select all. Then I'm going to go ahead and hit Sync right over here on the right hand side. What this is going to do is it's actually going to apply all of these presets that we've applied to this one image across the board, under all of your other images. So, when I hit that, it's going to go ahead and start doing all the setting changes, and then if we come back up to our library, we'll notice that all of the images are now taking shape and taking all of the information that was from that one timelapse shot, and putting it across the board in every other timelapse shot. So, our next step from here is we're going to be doing an export. In the export, you're going to go ahead and Select All again, it's probably already selected all, but we're going to go ahead and right-click. Go down to export. Click on export. What I like to do is make sure that the sub-folder is always checked. So, if it's not checked, go ahead and check it, and then you're going to title this as Edited, or sometimes you can do Processed, whatever works for you, whatever you're going to understand that is the the edited shot. So, maybe we'll try processed. So, I'm going to try processed here, and it's just going to create a new folder. All of the images that we're making out of this folder, or out of this image, or out of these images, are going to be dropped into this folder. You want to rename. I prefer to do the custom name plus sequence, so we'll call this Street Level, and we'll start off with one, which means it's going to increase the number from one up to 400 basically. Then down on our JPEG setting, make sure that JPEG's selected. We're only going to be doing a 1080p shot out of this, so we don't need anything high-quality. If you're shooting for clients, you may want to select TIFF, or even go with a DNG, but for this exercise, we're just going to do JPEG. Then turn the quality up to about an 85. All right. Check your other settings, make sure the resolution is at 240 to 300, 240 is fine for what we want to do. Then from here, we go ahead and specify our folder, say same folder as original photo, and that's going to plop it into the same folder that we just did. You're going to hit Export, and now's the waiting game. So, this can take some time depending on how many shots you have, and the size and resolution of your camera, this could take anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours, to four hours, it's really all based on the kind of hardware that you're using. I really recommend using a system that has at least 16 to 32 gigabytes of RAM. The more RAM you have or the faster SSD hard drives you have, the faster this process is going to go. I'd also recommend at least a quad core processor, if you have anything above that, you should be fine, and it should go relatively quickly. But, for the most part, just sit back, enjoy and then we'll move on to the next part, which is going to be loading it up into After Effects, and turning it in from a bunch of images into a piece of footage. So, we'll let that render, and we'll get back to it. 10. Stationary Timelapse: Part II - After Effects: All right guys, now that we're done processing we're going to go ahead and open up After Effects so we can start creating our time-lapse. I really recommend using After Effects CC. Anything from 2014 to 2015 is a perfect piece of software to use. All right now, that we're into our project menu guys, we're going to go ahead and create a new project. Should just create a blank site that's not already up. We're going to go ahead and create a New Composition and we're going to be making a 1080p composition. So, under presets that go down to 1080p or HDTV 1080 at 24 and what this means is we're going to be doing a 24 frames per second 1080p video. Go ahead and set the duration for 30 seconds. All right now, we want to import those files that we just created in light room so go ahead and go to File, Import, files and then depending on where you saved it, go ahead and find the folder and then I'm going to go ahead, you're going to click the first JPEG that you find and then make sure that JPEG sequence down here is selected. If it's not selected what's going to happen is it's just going to import the one image. We want to import all of the image. So, make sure that you select JPEG sequence, then click open and then you should see that it says, 1 to 400 and that's how many frames we took, we took 400 frames. So once that's done, we're going to go ahead make sure that our settings for that are correct, we want to make sure that the frames per second matches up. So, I'm going to come over here, click on frame rate, and you can already notice that our frame rates are completely different. So the composition frame rate is 24 and our time lapse sequence right now is 30 so, we want to change the time lapse sequence to 24 as well. So, what you're going to do is you're going to click on the image, you're going to go ahead and scroll down to interpret footage. You're going to select main and then where it says, Assume this frame rate you're going to change it from 30 down to 24, and so I have to do, click okay. So, now our frame rates match. What's going to happen is it's going to be able to play a lot smoother when the frame rates match, and if frame rates didn't match what would happen is there'll be a stutter or a glitch in your shot and it would look pretty nasty, so you want to make sure that the frame rates always match. So, after you figure that out you're going to go ahead and click your sequence and then I'm going to drag it down to composition one, all right. Depending on the resolution of your camera it could be a really high resolution camera or a very low resolution camera. Right now, we're using a 12 megapixel camera so, we're pretty much at the 4K range, so we need to bring down our image to the 1080p size. So, you're going to go ahead and select your image, hit scale, go ahead and make sure that when you scale down it's inside the boundaries of the 1080p window. So, from here, you're going to have some latitude to move the image up or down or left and right you can reposition it if you want. So, I want to make sure that there's enough foreground, middleground, and background without cutting off the building, so I'm going to position are shot right here. After that's done, you're pretty much ready to render your sequence out. So, make sure that your sequence bar at the top for rendering in and out goes from the start to the end of your time lapse clip. Now, all we've got to do is hit preview., we're going to hit play stop and what it's going to do is it's going to render a nice little draft version for us and efforts done rendering we can see the time lapse looks like. All right guys now that it's finished rendering, we're going to go ahead and take a look at our final shot so, let's go ahead and hit play. So, you can see when we were out shooting, we were actually dragging the shutter, so you can actually see the nice motion blur from the cars and the people as they go by. This just gives it a really nice cinematic flowing motion kind of feel to it, but I think the next part is, what happens if you want to add some kind of movement to the actual image? Well, we want to go ahead and take this static image and make it motion. So, what we're going to do is we're going to go back to scale, we're going to change the scale properties that we already did and take that from whatever the scale number is and take it right back up to its original which is 100 percent. After that, we're going to go ahead and create a new null object and then we're also going to create a new camera. Basically, what this does is it's going to place a virtual camera inside our scene and we're going to go ahead and link using the pick whip which is this cool little curlicue thing, we're going to take that and drag it to, sorry, go ahead and click on camera and drag it down to null and basically we're going to be able to control both the camera and our image using the null object. So, make sure that on this right hand side you can see a little 3D cube boxes means 3D layer. Make sure that they're all clicked on so, you can actually see a little cube pop up underneath our time lapse and on the null. Now, if I go ahead and come over to my window here and I click on the Z layer I can pull back and push in and you can see the the image starting to take shape. So, what I want to kind of convey to you guys is you can go back and add any kind of movements you want to a stationary image and this is a really great way to add some very subtle movements. What we're going to do here is maybe we just do a nice little push in so, by doing this we're going to create some keyframes. The first keyframe is where I want the camera to start and I want to kind of showcase the area here, so I want us to zoom out. So, I'm going to zoom into the building here just a little bit, find a spot that I really like, come down over here under null, go ahead and hit P on your keyboard and that's going to bring up the position. If you don't hit P you don't want to use a shortcut, you can just hit down the down arrow, go down to transform and under position click the little stopwatch here. What this is going to do is it's going to create a keyframe and you can see it under timeline right here. This is going to be our first point and then we're going to go all the way to the end of our shot, 16 seconds and we're going to go ahead and make the Alt keyframe and I'm just going to zoom out here so we can show some more of the image. Really, get as much in there as you can and I'm going to take it right to the cost of our frame. So, this is going to be the out, and if I scrub through the timeline here and you can actually see the motion happening as I'm scrubbing through and what this is doing it's just creating a simulated zoom basically. Since you are using a very high resolution camera like a for 4K or 6K or an 8K processor or chip censor, my bad. You have the ability to really move in, push in, pan left, tilt right, you can do whatever you want. So, we're going to go ahead and render the sequence now so you can see what it looks like with the simulated motion on it. One thing to watch out for is sometimes your computer may not be able to handle all of the processing that's going on so, what you can do is you can actually downgrade the resolution and what you're rendering in. If you click over here we're rendering at full resolution, but you can change that from full to half to a third or a quarter and this is really going to increase the performance of your computer and the playback. If you're finding it being if it's slow, so if you're finding your computer slow or just not responding, go ahead and just change the resolution. All right, and here we go, we're playing back our now motion controlled sequence and we can see that there's a really nice subtle zoom out and it really just gives it a really nice flowy feeling and it's something that you can do very easily with any static shot you produce. So, if you don't have the ability to have a motion control system, you can fake it and post. All right, now we have our shot completed. What we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and export this. So, the best way to do that is to go up to composition, making sure that we've got our sequence selected which is our comp one here. We're going to go ahead and add it to the Adobe Media Encoder. All right, now that we've got our Media Encoder open we're going to go ahead and change the settings. Now, depending on what you want to do, we can do something like an H.264 codec which is your standard kind of web viewing or we can save it for a little higher-quality and go to QuickTime and this is really going to be dependant upon your settings. If you go to the resource section in this guide, I'm going to go ahead and show you guys how to do different variations of codec encoding because there's a lot of differences for this. So, for this one in particular though we're just going to go ahead and make this for Internet release, so we're going to go ahead and click on the H.264 matching our source and high bit rate is fine for right now and what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and click on select the file output and then save this in the folder that we created. So, I'm going to go to my time lapse project, I'm going to click Save and I'm also going to change the name from comp one to street shot. Then from there all you're going to have to do is click on the green arrow and start the cue. Now again, this is all really- the rendering is dependent upon the processing speed and your hard drive and memory and everything else. So, this could take anywhere from a few minutes to a couple hours. In our case, it's just going to take a few minutes so, we'll let this render out and then we'll have our finished time lapse. All right are shot is finished so, what we're going to do is we're going go ahead right over here, we're going to click on this output file project line right here, it's highlighted in blue and what that's going to do it's going to open up the folder where our shot's at. I'm going to go ahead and see are newly created MP4, double-click it and there's our shot and go ahead and hit play and watch in real time. That looks pretty cool. You've made your first time lapse. Great job. 11. Motion-Controlled Timelapse: Now, that we've finished up our stationary shot, we're going to go ahead and edit our motion controlled shot, Let's open up Lightroom again. For this particular sequence, we were shooting at sunset so the exposure is going to be changing quite drastically. One of the things I really recommend is actually going to the middle of your sequence and exposing for that shot. The beginning might be a little overexposed but the ending is going to be more properly exposed. We're going to go as soon as these files load and go to the middle of our sequences which is somewhere out of the 400 shots around 200. I'm going to go ahead and select our 200th image right here which is in the middle of our image sequence. I'm going to go ahead and hit Develop. We can see right now that everything is pretty dark in the foreground and the background is properly exposed but we want to bring all that information out that's in the foreground. I'm going to go ahead and again play with the shadows. I'm going to increase that a little bit. You can see that we have some more detail. Now, we can actually see all the buildings in the foreground and in the background. I'm going to increase the exposure just a smidge. Using the histogram, I'm going to be able to gauge from our blacks all the way to our whites and make sure nothing is clipping. Right here, it is just about even. So the next thing is I'm going to go and decrease some of the highlights. I can get some more inflammation and an increase exposure a little bit more. Now, you can watch the histogram and now we've got a really nice dynamic image. Everything is really well lit. Then, as the sun is setting, the of color temperature changes. So we're going to go ahead and change the color temperature from where it was set to, to something that's more accurate. That's nice then, one thing I'd like to do is I'd like to make things, this actually comes down to the stylistic part. I can make things a little more gritty, little more dark, so I'm going to increase my blacks a little bit or actually decrease them. That's going to make everything just a little more contrasty and dark. At the same time, I'm going to increase my whites so that my bright objects kind of have a little more flair to him then. The two for this scene, there's a lot of information that's in the sky that you can't see. So we're going to increase the vibrancy a little bit as well as increase the saturation, and that's going to make this skyline pop. It's going to have some really nice yellows and oranges to him and it still looks relatively natural. From this point, we're going to do the same thing we did in the stationary shot where you're going to go ahead and select one image where the image that we're on right now which is image 200. I'm going to select all of the images by doing your Command or Ctrl A to select all. Then, we're going to come over to sync. Hit Sync and then we're going to hit synchronize, and that's going to paste this setting on all the other images. Once that happens, we can go back to our library and we can now see that all of the images that we just had that were dark are now coming out to be lighter. A little more robust and dynamic in their visual range, so great. From here, we're going to do the same thing that we did in the stationary processes. We're going to go ahead and export. I'm going to select all of the images. I'm going to right-click on my mouse, go down to export. You click on any image you want to or even go up to File Export as long as all the images are selected. Click on export. Again, make sure you're exporting to the same folder as the original photo. We're going to check put into a subfolder when call it processed then image name, we're going to go ahead and switch. Since, we just did street-level let's go for rooftop and call it. Make sure the start number is one and then you go ahead and hit Export, all the things you had before when you export should stay and remain the same. So, you shouldn't have to go back and change any of the other settings for your JPEG or the quality of your JPEG. We'll let this render and then when it's finished we'll go ahead and check it out and aftereffects. Cool. Now, that we're done rendering, we're going to go ahead and open up aftereffects and we've got our original sequence before so we're going to go ahead and create a new sequence. I'm going to create a new composition. We're going to name this composition Rooftop. Make sure your presets are the same as before. We're still at 1080 P at 24 frames per second. Go ahead and hit Okay. Now, we're going to import. I want to go up to File Import. Click on File. I'm going to over to my desktop. Open up Timelapse project. Go to my motion controlled shot. Find the folder that we exported our new JPEGs to. Click on the first JPEG. I'm going to say as a JPEG sequence make sure that it says important as Footage is selected and then click Open. Again, we really want to make sure that our frame rates are the same. So, just like we did in the stationary process, we're going to right-click on our image sequence here. Going to go to interpret footage. Click on Main and then change the assumed this frame rate is from 30 down to 24, after that click Okay, arrange our timelapse. So, go ahead, select rooftop or the image that you just put in. We're going to bring it down into our new sequence which as you can see it's selected by right here, and we're going to drag and drop. We're a little Y in the shot so what I'm going to do is I want to make this shot a little tighter. I'm going to go ahead and just make it so that it's just the skyline. I'm going to click my image. Click S for scale on the keyboard. Bringing the scale down a little bit. Reposition my image and I'm going to zoom out here for R, so I can make sure I can see the full image. There we go. Zoom it up just a little bit and there we go. We've got a really nice skyline shot. But one thing I can notice right off the bat is that the horizon is off-center. What I want to do is we want to rotate this so that it's a little more level. I'm going to hit R on my keyboard for rotation and I'm just going to decrease it just a little bit. I'm going to do a negative two. Actually, let's just do negative one and we can check our horizontal line by doing a Command R or Ctrl R, which brings up the rulers and I'm just going to bring a ruler right down here and take it right up the center object and I'm going to use this building right here to be my level. If we zoom in, we can see that the image is now a little more level. So that works out great. I'm going to zoom out here really quick. One thing that happened when we were up shooting is that there was a lot of wind, so I'm expecting there'd be a lot of bounce in the shot which means we're going to have to go in and add some different types of effects to smooth it out and stabilize it. We're going to do a really quick render. I'm going to change this from full to half which means it should render a lot faster and I go over my preview and hit Play and we're going to let this render and see what it looks like. We're done rendering our sequence. We're going to go ahead and check it out. I'm going to hit play here. Right off the bat, we can see that there's some wobble and some wiggle and some bouncing going on here and that's more than likely because of the wind. We want to go back and eliminate that completely and it's really easy to do. We're going to go ahead and stop our sequence. I'm going to click on our sequence right out here and I'm going to right-click on my mouse then, I'm going to bring it down and click on Warp Stabilizer VFX. What this is going to do is it's going to basically analyze all the information that's in the shot and then stabilize it based on the motion of the camera. We're going to let this render and analyze and then we'll check out our shot, see what happens afterwards. I really recommend just leaving the default settings for Warp Stabilizer as you don't really have to mess with it too much. Unless, you've got a really wobbly shot or just doesn't look good, you may want to either increase or decrease the smoothness, depending on the shot. For this evolution, we will just use it as a standard default which is 50 percent. Our shot is finished rendering. We're going to go ahead and check it out, see what it looks like with the Warp Stabilizer on it. Go ahead and click Play and it looks smooth as butter. I like it. Looks good. We're done. Now, you can kind of see what you can do if you have any problems with any bumps or vibration. Warp Stabilizer is an amazing tool. If it doesn't come out the way you like it, you can always adjust the smoothness, you can increase a decrease it, see what works best for your particular sequence. From here, we're going to go ahead and export it again. I'm going to go up to composition. Make sure that you've got your tab selected down below which we do right here. Then, go to Add to Adobe Media Encoder and then we see that our rooftop shot popped up right here. We're going to use the same settings as we did before with our stationary street shot. I'm going to change it though and make sure that this is in our project settings folder. Click Save and then we had a little green arrow and it's ready to go. We'll let this render out and see what it looks like we'll go from there. We are done rendering. We're going to go ahead and check it out. Just go ahead and click on the output file line right here. We can see that it's in our little folder that we created. Go ahead and click it and watch it in real time. Looks good. Now, that we've done this, we've created two different clips. You can create a rooftop or a street shot and this is where we can go back into Premier. We can throw some music underneath it and create a small story this is what I want you guys to be able to do I want you to go out to your city, go out to your area, produce a few timelapse clips, put it together and make a video out of it. I know you can do it 12. Final Thoughts: Well thanks for joining me guys it's been a pleasure, now want to see what you guys can do. So go out show your project, talk amongst yourselves, ask questions. I can't wait to see what you guys do. And remember guys check out the class resources I've got a tunnellings a lot of information and a lot of great little tips to help you with your time-lapse, thanks a lot guys. 13. Bonus: NYC Skillshare Timelapse #1: 14. Bonus: NYC Skillshare Timelapse #2: 15. Explore Photo Classes on Skillshare: