For the past year I have been looking for a way to get a time-lapse video posted on our website. Last week during our Tuesday staff meeting our ace crime reporter, Emily Gillespie, mentioned she was working on a story about dangerous intersections in Benton County. This was my chance. The plan was to run the story on Thursday or Friday. I didn’t have much time. Right after the meeting, I met with Emily to get the list of intersections and then scouted locations Tuesday night. The north side of the Harrison Boulevard bridge provided a nice view of the intersection with Northwest Third Street.
Wednesday night after rush hour, I slipped out of the office for an hour to shoot the time-lapse. The plan was to shoot four-second exposures and pause for a second and start the next exposure. It might have been the cold or an error on my part, the camera stopped at close to 200 exposures. I quickly changed the exposure to two seconds and then a one-second pause and started again. The second try yielded close to 300 exposures. After downloading the images to my computer, I made an action in Photoshop to crop and color correct the images. The images were then loaded into Quicktime Pro and turned into a video file.
Thursday morning at work, the clips were loaded into iMovie for editing. The two clips were only about 30 seconds of video, and I wanted the video to last a minute. The problem was solved by running each clip twice. If you look closely, you will see the same northbound train twice in the video. The titles and music were added and the video was uploaded to the site Thursday afternoon, the story ran on the front page of Friday’s Gazette-Times.
This was a fun project. Even though the time schedule was tight, I hope to do more in the future. If you have any questions or suggestions please let me know.
16 comments
Sean Brown says:
Dec 5, 2011
Hey Andy,
I have been doing a timelapes everyday for a year now and I like this video alot. Where was the camera that it did not get hit? If you play with shutter speed a bit more you might find that you like what you see
Andy Cripe says:
Dec 6, 2011
Sean,
The north side of the Harrison Boulevard bridge provided a nice view of the intersection with Southwest Third Street. Thanks for the tip I will play with the shutter speed on my next attempts.
Robert Peckyno says:
Dec 6, 2011
Really great job on the time lapse! (especially hard at night with the changing light!)
You might dig this time lapse (http://youtu.be/c6QUvmbLSc4) I did downtown at the Corvallis Saturday Market this year. (It took just over 1300 photos to make – then macro’d the tilt-shift effect before stringing the lot together in Premiere) Come to think of it, it would be fun to see yours done with tilt-shift, you were set at the perfect sort of angle for that type of effect)
Anyway, cheers and I hope you keep doing them! I think they provide a real visceral feel for the action that few still shots can capture.
Andy Cripe says:
Dec 6, 2011
Robert,
Nice video! I like how the tilt-shift effect makes it look a miniature market.
Yetti Manetti says:
Dec 6, 2011
nicely done. I’m working on my first for the model train layout at Citizens Bank.
Andy Cripe says:
Dec 6, 2011
Please share when you get it finished.
Randy says:
Dec 6, 2011
I would like to see video of Jefferson and 15th when classes are running and students are traveling around. I was hit by a car in this intersection while on a bicycle.
JT says:
Dec 6, 2011
Common sense would say just use a video camera….
Mark Lee says:
Dec 6, 2011
Excellent job! I must try this myself. Very fun to watch. Thanks…..
Rae DeLay says:
Dec 6, 2011
Thanks for sharing this video. I teach drivers Education in Corvallis and this is a great tool to show the dynamic of an interesection to new drivers. If you have any other videos of intersections would be great.
Lainey Dyer says:
Dec 6, 2011
Nice job Andy! Love it.
Rachel says:
Dec 6, 2011
Cool! I also think a time-lapse of Jefferson and 15th would be fun. Pedestrians, bikes, busses, cars…
Paul says:
Dec 6, 2011
Gee Andy, reminds me of my 24 years of ‘living’ at that intersection! I have a collection of accident pictures from our corner- just two of which are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rushhourphoto/collections/72157606191221042/
I do have to say the by-pass slowed down the number and severity of the accidents- or at least it seemed to.
JT- video is a series of stills ‘spun’ at 24 to 30 times a second anyway.
RLB says:
Dec 6, 2011
Lovely. If only you knew your street names. NW = Northwest Harrison and Northwest Third Streets…
sean brown says:
Dec 7, 2011
Stills used for timelapse over video can yeild much higher quality as well on my 5d mark ii its 21.5 megapix over the 1080p video. I have a timelapse of the courthouse with a motion controlled slider on my vimeo if you find the vimeo link on my site http://www.seandbrown.com. its a great tool to tell a story over time.
Tom Hanser says:
Dec 7, 2011
Nice work, Andy!