This film was shot during the first two weeks of COVID while the city was almost completely shut down. My favorite time of day in the city is blue hour so I tried to capture most of footage during dusk to capture the deep blues in the sky. It’s pretty wild looking back on a few of these shots where some of the main raids are almost completely empty. Thanks goodness things are back to normal!
Director – Julian Tryba
Drone - DJI Inspire 2
Traditional time-lapses are constrained by the idea that there is a single universal clock. In the spirit of Einstein's relativity theory, layer-lapses assign distinct clocks to any number of objects or regions in a scene. Each of these clocks may start at any point in time, and tick at any rate. The result is a visual time dilation effect known as layer-lapse.
Installation of the Janet Echelman sculpture began in the early morning hours of May 3, 2015 and was mostly completed ten hours later; it required four street closures, dozens of laborers, and six cranes. The sculpture is formed from over 100 miles of rope tied into more than 500,000 knots and is almost an half an acre in size while floating 50 to 365 feet over the park below. It is attached in four places to three buildings: 125 High Street, One International Place, and the InterContinental Hotel & Residences, Boston. It is on display through early October 2015.
I visited New York City for the first time in 2015 and I was mesmerized by the skyline, the city was unlike anything I had imagined. At the time, I had just left my engineering role at GE Aviation to pursue my dream job as a time-lapse specialist. After a day of exploring New York, I decided Manhattan would be the subject of my next film. I remember looking up at the massive skyscrapers and wondering how the heck I could get to the top. How could I convince buildings to give me access to their rooftops? After a couple years of filming time-lapses in NYC we are excited to release this film. Special thanks to 929 Media for all the projects we collaborated on to make this happen!
Trips to New York
Pictures Taken
in Parking Fees
Miles Driven
Hours of Filming
Traditional time-lapses are constrained by the idea that there is a single universal clock. In the spirit of Einstein's relativity theory, layer-lapses assign distinct clocks to any number of objects or regions in a scene. Each of these clocks may start at any point in time, and tick at any rate. The result is a visual time dilation effect known as layer-lapse.
After releasing "Boston Layer-Lapse" a few years ago, I was able to quit my engineering job to focus on time-lapse and film making. New York City was the obvious subject for my next film, the immense skyline was ideal. However I was facing an unknown creative challenge: when I created Boston Layer-Lapse I manually animated layers because I only had about 30 layers in a scene, in New York I was making layer-lapses with 100-300 layers so I needed some method to help me automate my workflow. Luckily I have an engineering background I can lean on, so in early 2016 I started learning scripting in after effects, and began writing code to create different layer-lapse 'looks'. To create a layer-lapse effect, I am assigning a unique equation to hundreds of buildings simultaneously. For each frame, every building is calculating and deciding which time of day to reveal. One example of a script that yields a ‘look’ are the waves of day or night that move through some of the shots in this film. To achieve the ‘look’ I can set parameters like the speed at which the wave moves across the screen, how rapidly each layer will switch from day to night or vice versa, and I'll often use a random sinusoidal function to create a subtle oscillation inside the wave itself. Now I've probably lost half my audience but for those of you still reading, the final step is linking an action or a script to a piece of the music. One way I've found this can be done is creating a set of audio triggers for a song, so that every note or beat triggers a change. By linking a certain script to each of these triggers one can create computer generated layer-lapses that are animated in response to music. Admittedly, this film is still a combination of mathematical and manual animation but my goal is to create a layer-lapse film where all the animations are simply decisions made by each layer after analyzing the music and the script it was assigned. By making layer-lapses run on mathematics, there are also some really cool avenues to create interactive physical or virtual art installations where a person could actually touch and manipulate a layer-lapse scene in real time. The further down the rabbit hole of layer-lapses I go, the more opportunities for experimentation I am discovering. I love the process of creative exploration and hopefully my audience gets something from it too, thanks for watching!
This film would not be possible without Casey from 929 Media. We've worked closely together on a variety of projects and the access I got from Casey and our clients. To learn more, check out some of the links to commerical project below, or visit Casey at: www.the929.com
Special thanks to Kessler Crane, every motion controlled shot was filmed on their Second Shooter and CineDrive systems: www.kesslercrane.com
Stay tuned for the release of NYC Layer-Lapse next week. Click here to subscribe and we'll email you when the film is released.
Trips to New York
Pictures Taken
in Parking Fees
Miles Driven
Hours of Filming
Watching my first total solar eclipse was nothing short of mind blowing. I was hoping to walk away with a couple cool images but I was not expecting how moving and powerful it would be to witness such a spectacular event unfold in person. From the rapid lighting changes, to the winds whipping down the hillside, the wavy shadows racing over the snow, the temperature drop, and the raw energy and excitement of the crowd as totality struck, I will never forget this brief moment in time.
Music - “Outro” by M83
🎥 DJI Ronin 4D, DJI Inspire 2 + Laowa 9mm f/2.8, Canon 5dsr + EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM, Canon 6D + 16-35mm f/2.8, Sony A7rii + 20mm f/1.8, GoPro Hero10, iPhone 15 Pro
Thank you to NASA/GSFC/JPL/LaRC, and the MISR Science Team for the additional images (like the sun closeups) and the CGI scenes shown in this video
