Timelapse photography and videos are one of my favourite type of media I enjoyed playing and experimenting with. Ever since I got my first SLR camera and started digitally splicing scans of the photos together in Windows Movie maker, and later, after years of movie maker losing days of childhood edits, moving into, iMovie, Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere. Oh, and now I’ve reverted to Go Pro’s own software.
An early video saw me attempt to document the construction of multiple outside broadcast commentary huts in a freezing warehouse with an old white MacBook’s webcam. Moving the laptop from corner to corner within the warehouse proved a challenging way to shoot and the edit is painfully long but it’s nice to look back and remember humble beginnings of my video editing work. I’m still a sucker for editing to the beat, which in hindsight, is certainly not always the best route.
OB Huts Timelapse from Leon Puplett on Vimeo.
I’ve used timelapse video in the past to document the construction of theatre sets at the Young Vic Theatre, London.
Two designs that stand out are 2017 productions of The Jungle and Life of Galileo. The Jungle saw an incredibly authentic-feeling replica of an Afghan cafe which was in Calais in 2015-17 inside the YV’s main house, designed by award-winning designer Miriam Buether, alongside Good Chance Theatre, Stephan Daldry and Justin Martin.
Life of Galileo saw the YV’s production team raising the roof for Lizzie Clachan’s stellar theatre design. Joe Wright’s production incorporated a domed ceiling that was flown up inside the Main House where projections by 59 Productions transported audiences between night skies and ornate church ceilings, eventually shooting them across the galaxy for a visually stunning experience.
I’ve also used timelapse a lot for personal projects, such as capturing climbing trips to the Peak District. It’s great to look back and enjoy the clouds flying overhead on turned out to be a changeable weekend, adding something you don’t appreciate whilst you’re trying to focus on your footwork and not on the imminent meeting of your face and a cold hard wall of millstone grit.
For other videos, I’ve simply wanted to capture different landscapes whilst traveling. Rarely do the videos do the real landscapes justice but sticking a go pro on timelapse mode gives me a great excuse to take things a bit slower, to chill out and enjoy the new surroundings.
Hope you enjoyed some of Youtube’s most ‘ambient’ and ‘bright’ sounding tracks on a few of these.
Leon Puplett 