If you haven’t seen it make its rounds yet, the collaboration of textile artist Kate Nartker and musical-visual artist Nate Bolt has put together a stunning example of timelapse done right.
Timelapse is often conceived as a way to collapse the temporal, but time and space are, indeed, relative – most of all when strapped into a Boeing. Aboard an Air France 747, an eleven hour flight from San Francisco to Paris becomes just two minutes, and the results are magical in the way in which they convey the globe-shrinking power of the modern jet airliner.
Don’t forget – to just a couple of generations earlier, let alone past centuries, today’s jet travel would seem as fast and silky-smooth as this video.
The climax is a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis that seems like it was lifted from a special effects sequence of Santa Claus’ sleigh over the North Pole.
Some relatively simple tools completed the project – and, naturally, the cooperation of airline and passengers.
Shot a photo roughly every two miles between take-off in San Francisco and landing in Paris CDG to make this airplane time lapse. Made with a 5d2, a time-lapse controller, and a 16mm – 35mm, mixed with some iPhone shots. The music is a modified demo track “Gain” by DETUNE ltd. denkitribe on the Korg iMS20 iPad App. I’m pretty sure the track is copyrighted but it’s My First Synthesizer score so I’m hoping denkitribe is cool with it. Edits and pans in After Effects CS5 and iMovie.
The photos during take-off and landing are all computer models and totally rendered because I would never use an electronic device during times which the FAA prohibits them. I did get lucky and have a whole row to myself to setup the tripod and gear.
Thanks to my neighbors for not minding an SLR click every 2 to 30 seconds for 11 hours, and thanks to Stephanie and the whole Air France flight crew for being insanely friendly and allowing me to shoot. Thanks to @ztaylor for showing me the Korg iMS20 iPad App. Thanks to @jayzombie and the #nerdbird on the way to SXSW this year for helping me come up with the idea. Thanks to @somnabulent for the idea of live scoring. Thanks to you for actually reading this far. You are a champion.
I’ve actually begun traveling with a manual film camera to regain the freedom of photography in the verboten sub-10,000-feet zone myself.
All of this seems a fitting companion to the future shock-equipped look at the invention of digital imagery from yesterday.
This one video also comes from a terrific little show that deserves your support:
http://beepshow.com/
More timelapse tips and examples:
https://cdm.link/tag/time-lapse/