Does someone have to sit with the camera for time-lapse videos?

January 10, 2018 7:12 PM

I was recently rewatching Breaking Bad, and I saw one of those characteristic long time-lapse videos where a bunch of clouds crosses the sky or day turns to night. It got me wondering how this is done, specifically whether someone has to sit there and guard the camera for hours on end. If so, it sounds like it would be kind of a boring job. Is there another way to do it?
posted by 4ster to Media & Arts (13 answers total)

For the shot, you use an intervalometer. Or you just shoot it on a movie camera and compress it digitally. For a show like this, there is someone sitting there watching it for sure.
posted by sanka at 7:38 PM on January 10, 2018

Generally people like to be near their expensive camera equipment, but if you were wanting to do something like this yourself and weren't worried about theft or people/animals otherwise interfering with your equipment it's technically feasible to not have to be there.

People aren't sitting there pushing a button once a minute or anything like that.
posted by yohko at 8:50 PM on January 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

I normally sit with my camera when I do long timelapses. I always have an audiobook on my phone, and I enjoy being outside. I love getting paid to listen to audiobooks.

Plus, if you're doing a day to night timelapse the exposure changes pretty drastically. So, being there to babysit the camera and make sure your exposure stays in a reasonable range helps make sure the timelapse is successful.
posted by gregr at 9:03 PM on January 10, 2018 [5 favorites]

Another way to do it, if your needs aren't super-specific, is to buy stock footage, of which there are thousands to choose from. Of course, somebody else had to deal with babysitting the camera for that, but from your perspective, you just pay for the license and drop it into your project.
posted by zachlipton at 9:12 PM on January 10, 2018 [4 favorites]

Seen it done on-set once. They put the camera on the roof of a building and just checked on it every now and again, while shooting other scenes inside. Also, because it's just a short estabishing shot, they will often just use little point and shoot cameras with the interval feature and just hide them somewhere, shooting. (Black tape over the red light makes a camera less noticeable.) The footage can even be higher res/sharper/better quality than the fancy-pants movie camera, since the instant camera has longer than 1/30th sec. to process and record the frame (since it's time-lapse) and can do like what? 30 MPixels or whatever these days. Also, yes, there's an app for that...if it looks 'gritty' or 'instagram-filtery', then that's probably what they used.
posted by sexyrobot at 10:51 PM on January 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

(Also, I think they flipped it in the final movie from sun-going-down to sun-coming-up)
posted by sexyrobot at 10:56 PM on January 10, 2018

We have done this and it’s not that complicated. My husband’s midline Nikon can be left alone on a tripod to take photos at specified intervals, and then we use simple program we got from somewhere to stitch them into a video. Here’s a time lapse from our upstairs window done this way. We have also done them in *very* isolated locations where there was not any possibility of someone coming and stealing the camera but mostly in a location with any kind of traffic you’d want to be nearby.
posted by charmedimsure at 11:30 PM on January 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Also, in the case of Breaking Bad, according to the behind the scenes podcasts, the soundstage they shot at was out at the edge of the desert*. It was possible to just go outside point the camera away from the city and you'd just see landscape. That probably allows them to do less babysitting.

*Apparently, development has occurred such that this is no longer true for this facility.
posted by mmascolino at 5:17 AM on January 11, 2018

I'm currently running two Nikon DSLRs taking time-lapse photos inside a power plant about 100 miles away, to document the tear-down and rebuilding of the generators. The security of the cameras is not an issue, since it's in a federal facility that we oversee, so, no, I don't have to physically be there.

Each camera is connected via USB to a computer, which I can access over our network. I use a program called NK Remote, which lets me set the interval for each shot, or watch the scene live and trip the shutter on demand. I can also change the auto-focus points, and all the camera settings. The project has been going about two years now, and will continue for another three or so.
posted by The Deej at 5:37 AM on January 11, 2018 [6 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks, everyone. These answers are very interesting.
posted by 4ster at 6:49 AM on January 11, 2018

I know a guy that set a tripod and his camera a little off the path in a meadow in Yosemite Valley (I think in some tall grass) to do some sort of time lapse or really long exposure shot. He left it and went to the Awahanee or curled up in his car.

He went back later and was convinced someone stole his camera, but he just had to walk a bit further to find where he'd left it.
posted by CoffeeHikeNapWine at 7:50 AM on January 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Hopefully this isn't entirely a derail, but it's also worth considering how much of the life of film and television professional involves sitting around waiting for stuff to happen. Spending three hours sitting in a field to get a minute of footage might well be a welcome break from spending 16 hours sitting quietly on a sound stage to get a minute of footage.

More on topic, I met a crew making a time-lapse sunset of my city's skyline last year for a national TV show. They had an automated three axis robot doing some needlessly complicated slow tilt motion and an intervalometer shutter control plugged into a high end consumer SLR camera. Four people spent a few hours standing around to get the shot. They were surrounded by people fishing, and seemed to be in similar spirits.
posted by eotvos at 9:53 AM on January 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

You can do really nice timelapses on a phone these days, Lapseit is a few bucks for ios/android - I have done a couple of professional theatre shows using footage from my old Samsung.
posted by Sebmojo at 12:35 PM on January 11, 2018