I discussed my final video composition at the start of the session today with my lecturers.  They like the work, rest and play concept.  I am going to pull together two days of time-lapse, a Friday into a Saturday.  i.e. the Friday will be going to work, working, coming home, watching some TV then bed, then I will pull together clips for ‘play’ for a Saturday.  There will also be some sleep/rest involved.

I’d brought my macbook into college, so had all of my work together and started using iMovie to pull a rough first cut together.  I started using some different transition sequences, such as the first clip splitting and opening like double doors with the second clip ‘coming though the door’ and fades to black.  But when I showed these to the lectures at the end of the session, we all agreed it was a bit cheesy.  Some sort of cross-fade or blur might look better.  Today was a really good productive session.  I feel like i’m pretty close to a finished product.

In relation to the course, my essay is nearly written.  I still need to decide how to display my video as well as design some business cards for self promotion.  But I feel like i’m on top of it now.

Really pleased today, i’ve nailed the driving to and from work sections.  Secured my camera on my tripod to the back seat as far back as I could.  Took shots at 10 second intervals.  Have replayed at 10fps.

Drive to work:

Drive home:

So I tested the ‘gogglebox’ time-lapse tonight.  My wife and I sat down and watched 24 hours in A & E.  I went for a low down angle, being close not to get massive knees, with the camera pretty close to the TV.

I had a nearly full camera battery and tried one shot every 10 seconds.  The battery lasted from 21:06:25 till 22:03:35, giving me 342 frames.

Playing these back at 25fps I get nearly 14 seconds of video, but it’s terrible, really flickery.

At 15fps I get about 23 seconds

At 10fps I get 34 seconds

At 6fps I get nearly a minute of jerky video.

I’m pretty happy with it, I think I got the angle right to get the ‘gogglebox’ feel.  About 15fps seems to be the best.

I had another go at a time-lapse sleep of myself last night.  My first attempt wasn’t great,  This time I tried sleeping with a small head torch on.  The list is a bit strange, but the effect works well.  With the usual battery constraints I had to shoot at 2 minute intervals.  I shot from 23:14 till 6:42am.  225 shots.  As this is such a long time in the day I wanted to play it back as slowly as I dare.  I’ve done this at 6fps and it works really well and gives me about 38 seconds of footage.  Because i’m probably going to have sleeping at either end of the video, i’m going to try shooting this over two nights, do a nighttime 4 hours and a morning 4 hours.  So I can get more shots and give me more time in the final video.

Here is what I shot:

At college today I discussed again my idea’s for the “Work, rest and play” narrative.  From last weeks post i’d decided to try a sleep, a day at work and the drives to and from.  Which I posted here.  The lecturer and my fellow classmates liked what I shot.  Although the sleep section wasn’t great.  The day at work was pretty fascinating.

We decided that for rest and play I should do a sort of time-lapse gogglebox.  A TV program where you see the reactions of people watching TV that’s been on that week.  I could also shoot myself playing x-box.

For work I should try shooting from behind my monitors to see my face, with the rest of the office in the background.  Just to give some interest when i’m away from my desk.

Speed is also something that was discussed.  25 Frames Per Second (fps) is ideal for playback as this matches television.  However this means taking and processing a lot of images.  The majority of video’s i’ve been setting to 15fps playback.  There is also the issue of battery life.  To shoot something for 6 hours without swapping the battery I have to set for 1 shot per minute, so that the battery lasts.  This does mean that I miss some detail and the video’s can look a bit jerky.  Where as something like a drive to work can be shot at 1 shot every 2 seconds, so it looks smooth.

With a day at work there is a natural break after 4 hours for lunch, so I can swap the battery and not miss anything, but this still means i’m limited to a shot every minute.

My only option is to invest in a mains adapter for my camera, but i’m spending so much on college at the moment with the exhibition I don’t think this is an option.

As part of my Work, Rest and Play idea I’ve done a few time lapse’s of myself.

The first is myself sleeping.  I used the camera in shutter priority to try and get reasonable exposures in the dark and then as it got light in the morning.  This is my first attempt without a light and appears to have gone well until the street lamp outside went out.  I then got several hours of black (which i’ve cut out)  the morning was quite good, but the battery when flat at about 5:30, an hour before I was due to get up.  Pleased with it, needs re-shooting with some light in the room:

I then drove to work:

Captured myself at work for 8 hours (which i’m really pleased with)

I then drove home:

Pleased with all of it.  Maybe need to fill in some gaps.  I like the idea of a time lapsed day, but am struggling to find some ‘play’ at the moment.  A time lapsed style goggle box might be good, me watching TV and eating dinner in the evening.  Will try and re-shoot the driving ones with the camera further back in the car, so the viewer can see me driving as well as the traffic, feel this will fit better with the other video’s of my day.

At college today I discussed my idea’s for “Work, rest and play” narrative to my work as mentioned in my post from 5th May.  He liked the idea, but after some discussion we decided it would be good to make it about me.  Try time lapsing myself at work, sleeping – rest, and playing cricket, or maybe a jigsaw or playing x-box.

I felt that this would be do-able, I didn’t need to worry about leaving my camera anywhere, just a bit of extra work before I did something and just carry on with life.

As my previous posts show I’ve been doing a lot of Time lapse photography, not so much hyper lapse, due to it being so time consuming.

Lecturers have been pushing me in the direction of spaces filling with crowds and or emptying.  But i’m not really ‘feeling’ it, plus, again, it’s the time issue, trying to find 4-8 hours to either leave my camera in a secure location or sit with it has just not been do-able.

The majority of what i’ve been shooting has been what i’ve been doing at the time.  i.e. mowing the lawn, or when someone came round to fix the fence.  I’d not really found a story or a narrative to link clips together.

I had a chat with my wife and she came up with the concept of “work, rest and play”.   I could have the fence being fixed, then the dogs sleeping and then finish with either the fairground or a time-lapse of one of my league cricket matches.