Bluebell timelapse and lessons learnt
Patrick and I are currently planning and preparing for our ‘uber film’, which we hope to begin shooting in early summer once our sponsors stump up a bike. It’s a mountain bike film set across all 4 seasons and filmed over 15 months. We’ve chosen such a long period because we want to make the most of the differences in riding conditions, weather and landscapes as the months progress. We’ve been planning this film in our head and on bits of paper for the last two years so it’s exciting to be so close to filming. Another awesome mountain bike film was released towards the end of last year called Life Cycles which makes an impressive use of the changing seasons and is definitely a source of inspiration for our own film.
With these changing seasons in mind I’ve started to think a lot about timelapse videos. I’ve seen a number of photo and video timelapses recently and one such video that has stuck in my mind was Eirik Solheim’s One Year in 120 Seconds where he took a series of short videos from his balcony and stitched them together. He lives in Norway and the transitions between the seasons look really intense.
As it was approaching spring I decided to focus on creating a seasonal timelapse of the quintessentially British flower the Bluebell. I did a little research in the web and found a spot just 30 minutes drive away which was listed as one of the best spots for bluebells in the North West called Lumb Brook Woods. Sure enough I made an initial recce with my Dad and it looked as though there would be a mass of bluebells. They were due to bloom in about 5 weeks time and we could already see the leaves where they would flourish as bluebells start sprouting in winter…i’ve become a bit of a know it all when it comes to bluebells.
Day One of our Bluebell Timelapse
A relatively short distance to the bluebells was a must as once the they started to flourish we knew we would be visiting everyday. We didn’t want to impact on the local woodland but we needed to find a spot where we could take a series of videos from exactly the same spot. My ever resourceful Dad knocked up some wooden stake like things that we could knock into the ground and use as a base for our camera. We still had the problem of ensuring the camera was mounted in exactly the right place so the transition between shots would be smooth. In my research I stumbled upon a product called Steel Putty which essentially is a putty until you mould it together in your hands and within 5 minutes it dries as hard as steel.
I inserted my camera in a plastic bag (for protection) and placed the camera onto the stake my dad had hammered into the ground. I then pushed the putty up around the edges of my camera to form and exact outline. I moved the camera and within minutes the putty had dried and I had a perfect template to mount my camera to on each visit.
Our Camera Mount with Steel Putty
Camera in Action
We planned to take photos from 4 locations in the woods and wanted to take photos on regular days for about 5 mins at each spot. We had planned to use an intervalometer but we soon decided that was pointless as we were covering such a short time period at every spot each day. From one previous timelapse experiment and a little research I’d guessed it better to use all manual settings so we could avoid any flicker in the timelapse. The first day we went it was overcast but we jotted down the settings and planned to use the same ones throughout the month. Our plans were scuppered though when we returned on a sunny day and the resulting images looked very bleached. It was time to my thinking cap on.
After the bleached out photos I did a little more research. I basically did a google search for “manual or automatic exposure timelapse”. Turns out its a big issue in the world of timelapse. Manual or automatic settings mainly come down to preference rather than a right or wrong answer. So given the results from our first three trips I decided to switch to automatic mainly because we were rocking up at the same time each day (between 5 – 6pm) so whilst cloud cover may change we were’nt going to experience night fall or and the sun would remain in relatively the same place. I made a final last minute decision to also use video (30 seconds per location each visit) rather than photos primarily because I wanted to maintain the fluidity of water running in the stream and any other movement. I crossed my fingers.
Tree Mounted Platform
So on the 3rd April 2011 we recorded the first video files. We had set the first timelapse photos up 7 days earlier and the photos taken that week wouldn’t get used but we had learnt a lot! My dad ended up putting a hell of a lot of effort into making trips to the woods and taking videos. He most definitely deserves BIG props! All seemed to be going really well other than a few hiccups such as the steel putty becoming detached from one of our stakes. There was one major blow though, and that was the bluebells. We had expected a vibrant carpet of dazzling bluebells but instead we ended up with a delicate haze of very fragile looking flowers.
In hindsight I should have done a lot more testing and experimenting before going for the BIG shot but that pretty much sums up my approach. I like to ‘get on with it’ or perhaps others would say I can be a bit ‘slap dash’.
Here’s a very short test video using just four video clips out of a potential twenty. I’m still working on the final versions but you get the idea…
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