Industrial & Construction Time-Lapse Photography Tips

1. Camera Foundations & Realities

The number one enemy of a long-term time-lapse is camera movement from structural shifting or the camera being bumped by workers or machinery, but these are hazards that can be worked around. Getting the camera in close to the action on the scaffolding produces superior results and is worth the effort, but when minor bumps occur, additional care needs to be applied in post-production. Small movements can be removed by steadying the shot in After Effects, and minor moves require the shots to be lined up first by using the corner pin filter. Larger moves require the camera to be repositioned to the opposing 90° angle, otherwise a "jump cut" will result when the shots are run together. Solid foundations for wider shots can be mounted to local utility poles, non-destructive cowling mounts, building structures, or even trees—all of which produce good results.

2. Mains, Solar and Battery Power

Mains power on construction sites is notoriously unreliable. Power outages and lines being unplugged by workers are a constant hazard. If we are using mains power on an interior site, we will always have a battery backup or run on monthly cycled batteries in place. On most construction sites, we use solar-powered or battery-operated systems. All our cameras are monitored for reliability and we are on standby 24/7 for any issues.

3. High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Flicker Removal Software - a superior result

Sydney weather can flip from sun into shadow and back to sun in minutes, causing a flickering effect when played back in time-lapse videos. Standard exposures will constantly blow out bright highlights and plunge structural details into black shadows. We always shoot using advanced bracketed HDR methods when shooting time-lapse video. This methodology balances extreme exposure shifts across changing weather, yielding a smooth, broadcast-ready baseline without extreme harshness and flicker. Further digital enhancing happens in post-production before releasing the vision to the client. Here, we use resource-heavy computer flicker removal software to further even out the exposures. For a superior result, we can further edit out any extreme contrasting frames before processing.

4. The Final Delivery: Sunset to Moonlight

As a project reaches its final architectural build and handover milestone, decreasing time-lapse frame capture intervals on the average construction build down to a tighter five-minute cadence yields gorgeous transitions from day into night. Internal spaces glow as the building transitions into a star-filled, moon-lit night, extending the magic hour and complementing your asset for your project portfolio or large-scale photographs.

5. Editing

If the whole project was photographed on cloudy days only, editing would be relatively easy as you would just edit to action like every other film genre. But the problem with time-lapse is that the sun pops in and out, producing an annoying contrasting flicker effect while moving slowly across the sky.

While the bulk of our time-lapse work involves making monthly progress videos, some of our clients require a fully edited video for marketing or archival reasons. This editing process can be broken down into several levels requiring vastly different amounts of time and resources. The easiest and virtually cost-free method is to edit out the non-work days and join all the vision together. While the monthly videos run for an easily watched few minutes, joining them all together, although cost-effective, would become rather tedious to watch on average long-running builds.

The next cost-effective level would be to edit all the vision around the same time of day. The problem with this method is that it misses out on some of the action that happens earlier or later in the day, causing a jump effect, and the sun's shadow is annoying as it constantly flicks back and forward over a shorter area while transitioning into shadow and brightness. You could avoid these effects by shooting a shot when the sun's shadow is in the same position each day, but requiring 25 workdays to produce one second of video is totally impractical. You would also notice the sun's shadow getting longer and shorter throughout the seasons as it drops in height.

The method Electric Films uses is much more time-consuming, but produces far superior results. We watch the action to get the vision to run as smoothly as possible. We like the edit to be driven by the action taking place on the screen. An example is: if a wall is being built, we like to see a smooth flow of bricks going up and not just jumping from the first brick to the last. We coordinate all the action with the sun moving slowly across the sky at the same rate as if you let the shot run unedited for a day. We edit the action on a frame-by-frame basis over multiple days to the timing of the sun's movement. We edit in sections, depending on how much action is happening in either the sun or cloud. Although time-consuming, this method produces finished results far superior to other solutions on the market.