How to Make a Time Lapse Movie

Steve Niedorf

Duration: 8 mins

Description

After making a time lapse video from infrared stills, the next challenge is how to make a time lapse movie. In this video, professional photographer Steve Niedorf gives you tips and techniques on how to make a time lapse movie. He begins with a sequence of infrared landscape images where a flare in the sky slowly pops up in subsequent exposures. This gives him the idea for his video. In the second image sequence, he captures multiple exposures of a large tree as the sky goes from clear to cloudy, another natural for video. He also suggests a panning action as you create your compositions. Your goal is to experiment with different approaches, then edit in time lapse to see the results.

Another way to add a cinematic quality to your videos from stills is to use the rack focus technique. With your camera on a stable tripod, you shoot one image way out of focus, push into an intermediate image in better focus, then do a third image in sharp focus, and finally go out of focus in subsequent frames. Using this rack focus technique, Steve shows you a 4-second time lapse video of a palm tree.

The next step in how to make time lapse movie is with a soundtrack. You can download your test music for free on certain music websites. Using the still image sequences he had previously made, he created a minute and a quarter time lapse video he titled Big Island Infrared, then added his downloaded music soundtrack. He shows you how he edited the music to fit the video dissolves and also how to change the speed of the music track. In creating videos from infrared stills, you go through an experimental process, what works and what doesn’t in capturing your still sequences, editing in Lightroom, and creating your final video in Premiere Pro. It’s all about how to make a time lapse movie.