Ok, I’ll be honest, at first I was confused… Like, what did I just watch and how the hell did they do that. It turns out, the whole process is very simple and I will outline it below:

The Process of Creating a Hyperlapse

• The idea here is to pick one specific target to aim your camera at. In this case, I used the center of the clock face on City Hall in downtown Philadelphia.
• Make sure you have the grid on your camera displayed, and line up the center marks with the center of your target. If your camera has a leveler, enable it.

These are crucial to shooting a successful hyperlapse!

• Pick a starting location and snap your first pic. It is a good idea to use the viewfinder because the height of your eye doesn’t change. That way you can maintain consistency throughout the process.
  

  *If you have a monopod, that is actually the preferred method. I didn’t use one for this tutorial and you can tell in the end product… luckily warp stabilizer was there to save me once again.

• Take one step in between each shot. You’ll want to shoot at least 48 stills/frames. This will give you 2 seconds of playback time if you’re exporting in 24 frames per second (which you should be).

Color Correcting the Hyperlapse

• Once you have the desired number of still images (remember the more pictures the longer your hyperlapse will be) go ahead and load them into Adobe Lightroom.
• Here you can make some overall adjustments, such as exposure settings, sharpening, tone curve, etc.
• Only edit the first picture! After you have it just the way you like it, hold down shift and click on the last picture in the sequence. This will highlight all of the images. Then you’ll want to hit Synchronize. After all, we want each picture to be consistently colored.
• Once LR is finished syncing, export your images as JPG’s to a new folder.

Assembly and Exporting the Hyperlapse Video as MP4:

– Open up a new project in Premiere Pro. Label it “Hyperlapse”.
– Go to the Project Panel and select Import. Find the folder where your edited images are stored and select the first image in the sequence.
– At the bottom of the Import window, you’ll see a button for Options. Click on that and check the box for Image Sequence.
– Premiere Pro will automatically package all your still images into one video clip. It’s really that easy!!
– If you footage appears shaky, like mine in the example, simply use the effect Warp Stabilizer and put the settings on 20% and Position, Scale, Rotation.
– You’re now ready to export your finished product!

If you want to see more awesome tutorials on hyperlapses or see how they’re implemented in some cool videos, some of the best examples I’ve seen are from Sam Kolder and TaylorCut Films.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me at austin@needmomentum.com. I’ll be back soon with more tips and tricks on how to improve your photos and videos.