Timelapses

The first part of filming I planned to do in the kitchen is the time-lapse footage that I will use as B roll to intercut with the interviews. As this function is not available on the camera by default so I turned to Magic Lantern once again. As part of the features it brings to my camera, it is capable of simulating the external input of and intervalometer. This makes the camera take a photo after a set amount of time, repeating until it runs out of memory or reaches a specified number of shots. It also includes and information display to help my calculate the amount of real-time captured and how long that would compare when played back a 25 fps.


Once the intervalometer was set up for each shot I put the camera in manual mode with correct exposure and manually set the white balance rather than using auto. This was done to prevent any flickering as the camera adjusts slightly in between shots when trying judge exposure and white balance. For each shot I used my mini tripod and wedged the camera between the wall and wipe-down surfaces to keep it out of the way of the people working in the kitchen.

Once all the shots have been captured I then went into After Effects and created a now 1080p composition. I then imported the individual photos into the project files and selected the option to import as an image sequence.


I then dragged the compressed sequence onto the composition and After Effects spaces out the JPEG sequence with one photo per frame. Because the photo resolution is much higher than 1080p, I framed the shots very wide, zoomed in then used position keyframes to create a 'slider' effect. I think this will add much more visual interest without me having to spend money on hiring a dolly or slider, the only downside being the lack of perspective or parallax shift. I then exported this as an uncompressed ProRes file to make sure I don't introduce any compression artefacts early on in the footage. Below is a raw and ungraded sample of how the time-lapses turned out. Overall I'm really happy with how they turned out and will continue this method for the remaining time-lapses.