Time marches on

Camcorders can be set to do a time laspe image or montage. Basically, you manipulate the shutter speed on the camcorder. Sony makes it easy to manually set the shutter to open & take a photo every few seconds or minutes. This function is useful if you want to record a sunset or sunrise with the camcorder. Some camcorders have automatic pre-settings for time laspe photos. Or you can use the advance mode to customize what specific time of day the photo was taken. The illusion of motion is created by combining all the photo together in one sequence.

I prefer sequences that involve people. You can point it at a busy street to record a crowd of people growing and then quickly disappearing. Or you can use it to capture nature images, like the Aurora natural lights in the clip below.

You don’t need high-tech special effects to do time laspe. Just meticulous set-up and planning so you capture enough stills to create coherent motion. This stylistic device works well for exposition or transitions. If you want to tell the viewer that the next action starts several hours into the future. You can do a quick time laspe montage to convey this idea. I remember on “Angel”, the tv show, they loved to show the daylight passing using this effect. The main character was a vampire, so showing the day leaving is an important fact that helps prove that Angel is in fact a supernatural being. You could edit in a 10 second sequence, and you definitely have set the stage for an entrance of this type of character into a story.

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1. The Animated World
2. Take A Picture
3. Digital Photo Booth
4. Sony Stylin’
5. Out with the Old