What is no one has ever done a top notch hyper-lapse video on your favorite city? Oliver has grabbed his camera, and started shooting.. for his Masterpiece!
“Unlike cities such as New York, Paris or Dubai, no one ever did a real hyperlapse video of Miami so I had to fix this.”
I started this project 2 years ago with hyperlapse experimentation. My first attempts were very bad and most sequence went to the trash bin. It took me a while to capture the hyperlapse sequence correctly (must be very very accurate) and then do the post-stabilization frame by frame.
Oliver has been so nice to share quite many details on his video, so here they are!
About the “Miami Derezzed 4K” video
Hyperlapse is very time consuming. In average, one second of video takes 1 or 2 hours of work and I don’t even count the failed attempts (either I fucked up, light was wrong or something/someone messed with my sequence on site).
Techniques Used
The video is 75% hyperlapse, 5% timelapse and 20% drone and aerial (rented plane and helicopter). I had a massive volume of video and photo (RAW of course) and I only used the tip of the iceberg.
I failed many times during my learning process but I now master the most complex type of sequence such as HDR Hyperlapse or Holy Grail Hyperlapse.
In terms of FPS, I shot everything in 30p because it looks more fluid than 24 or 25 but it means a lot of extra work for hyperlapse (ie. for a 4 seconds long hyperlapse sequence I would have to shoot 96 pic in 24p vs 120 pic at 30p).
Gears and software
Here is what I used:
Hardware
- DJI Phantom 3 Pro with Mars Lite & Mayday Board
- TBS Discovery Pro with custom GoPro 4 lens
- Polar Pro Filters
- Dynamic Perception Stage One & Stage R with NMX controller
- Panasonic GH4
- Lumix 12-35 f/2.8
- Canon FD 50mm f/1.4 and custom made gimbal (Alexmos)
- Canon 6D
- Samyang 14mm f/2.8,
- Sigma 24 & 35mm f/1.4 Art
- Canon EF 50 f/1.4
- Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L
- Cessna 172 & Bell-206 😉
- A boat & Paddle board
Software
- Adobe Premiere & After Effects
- Adobe Lightroom
- LRTimelapse 4
- SNS-HDR Pro
How many pictures?
Honestly I have no idea of the number of pictures taken and I find this point completely irrelevant. The number of shots and TB of hard drive is not a good metric and does not give any indication regarding the quality of the final video.
What I can tell is that I finally achieved a good ratio of shooting attempts / keeper sequence. When I started hyperlapse I had to discard 80% of my sequence, now I can keep 70-80% of my clips.
I also have a lot of unused sequence that I shot but didn’t make it to the final video. I prefer to squeeze the best out of my project and not fall into the trap of “clips stacking” for the sake of it. This video is already long with its 4 minutes duration.
Aerial Shots & Safety
I used a DJI Phantom 3 Pro for the aerial shots along with a TBS Discovery Pro fitted with a GoPro 4 black. I modded the lens in order to get a longer focal. Some shots were taken from airplane (C-172) and I also rented a Helicopter (Bell-206).
In terms of safety, the drone shots were line of sight only and below 400 feet following the AMA & FAA guidlines. 90% of the drone flight occurred over the water even if it’s not visible because of the framing. For the remaining 10%, I flew over parks and empty area with the Phantom. I follow a precise scouting of the place before each flight and perform a thorough checklist.
And because shit happens, I also installed a Mars Lite parachute with a North UAV Mayday board (special thanks to Kyle) on the Phantom in order to prevent any damage/injury is something goes wrong.
Last, I had to notify the airport manager in some places before my flights and I stayed away from Class B airspace of Miami (I couldn’t get clearance despite my request).
