00:00
187
A video I made in Beijing. I had recently broken an arm and couldn't use full-size cameras, so I went around doing time lapses with a 7d at night.

The first few time lapses are standard, but they get progressively more and more crazy.

The compression on this vimeo version is pretty bad. With the picture changing so quickly in every frame, the compression knocks out a lot of detail and color space. The original uncompressed 1080p version is much, much cleaner and nicer looking.

I wrote an article about the shooting on dslrnewsshooter.com/2010/12/28/nathan-mauger-shoots-captivating-timelapse-of-beijing-on-a-canon-eos7d/

Music is the Fatboy Slim song "Ya Mama" from the album "Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars."
amazon.com/Ya-Mama-Explicit/dp/B000SX85ZQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1293179534&sr=8-2

Canon 7d
Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L
Canon 50mm f/1.2L
Tokina 10-17 f/4.5
Canon 2x extender
Canon intervalometer

Credits

Likes

  • Blake Whitman staff 1 year ago
    Love the close up shots here, definitely a more unique take on timelapse. Especially love 2:26.
  •  
  • Mateo Vega 1 year ago
    Well done. I love how you got up close and your creativity with the signs.
  •  
  • Danijel Šivinjski 1 year ago
    This really is too much :P Good work!
  •  
  • Ben Bloom 1 year ago
    This looks like a techno rave. Did you do any color grading on this or is this raw footage?
  • Marien MALET 1 year ago
    Yes, it's exactly like a techno rave.
  • Nathan Mauger 1 year ago
    Massive color grading… All the lights in Beijing at night are sodium vapor so it's very muddy and brown. Mostly I used 3200K preset and just graded in post…
  •  
  • Tom Hackbarth 1 year ago
    overwhelming
    awesome
  •  
  • Claudia Arciga 1 year ago
    Woooowww! great! Break your arm again heheheh... Nop, just kidding.
  •  
  • Eric Brown plus 1 year ago
    nice flow. pretty nice lighting effect in small tunnel of the overpass.
  •  
  • Junior Hernandez plus 1 year ago
    Nicely done!
  •  
  • Laurens Neels 1 year ago
    Wow. 1:44, extreme wow.
  •  
  • Doume06 1 year ago
    very good job ! very nice
  •  
  • Love Story Media plus 1 year ago
    Wow... more than a litte inspiring.
  •  
  • Daniel Grey 1 year ago
    Oh I love this'.
    1:30 "push the tempo" in the time with the buses leaving the lights. I was feeling it!
    Creative, cool, catastrophic.
  •  
  • Sinan İpek 1 year ago
    Did you use any special equipment to set the time interval automaticaly? Or just pressed the button at the right time.
  • Nathan Mauger 1 year ago
    I used an intervalometer, which lets you take pictures automatically. I set it at four-second intervals.
  •  
  • Paul Pomeroy 1 year ago
    really fun to watch, especially at 1:39 which reminded me of salmon swimming upstream...
  •  
  • Jeremy Snell 1 year ago
    .. this is awesome man.
    I knew it was Beijing as soon as it started.. i've done a few timelapses on that first bridge! =)
  •  
  • mapslima 1 year ago
    so cool! really amazing
    congrats!
    for how long did you remain on the spots to shoot the frames?
  • Nathan Mauger 1 year ago
    12-15 minutes for each...
  • mapslima 11 months ago
    awesome!
    and about how many frames per minute did you take?
  •  
  • Devin Pinckard 1 year ago
    Very nice! I think I might have had a seizure while I watched it...but it was worth it!
  •  
  • Joe Moya plus 1 year ago
    If my guess is correct... That is a LOT of timelapse shots to get 3 mins. of video...5-6 hrs. of shooting?

    ... very nice....
  •  
  • 420STUDIO 1 year ago
    great video!!
  •  
  • Ben 1 year ago
    Very nice Nathan. a big contrast with my 8mm film of '63-'64 were life was much slower. vimeo.com/18143868 Maybe I should call it Too slow, too little haha!!:-)
  •  
  • Neil Chang 1 year ago
    I like your music!
    and the video is awesome!!!!!
  •  
  • arturs lurins 1 year ago
    cool idea :D but if you would put some super slow motion it would be perfect. :)
    sorry about english
  •  
  • Rick Ames 1 year ago
    Very cool vid. Great sound/sight integration.
  •  
  • john kopec 1 year ago
    Awesome - which lens did you use for the wideangle shots?
  • Nathan Mauger 1 year ago
    Tokina 11-17... All lenses are listed above...
  • john kopec 1 year ago
    Thanks! My eyes must have skipped over that!
  •  
  • lucio greco 1 year ago
    wow!
    fuckin amazin!
    music suits perfect and the little details in the middle of that hellish ride... awesome
  •  
  • Aditya Kolli 1 year ago
    Awesome.... the shot at 2:03 is just amazing....
  •  
  • Joe Lacrasse 1 year ago
    Loved it
  •  
  • Markus Kühl plus 1 year ago
    Cool stopmotion, I really like it!
  •  
  • michael gambino pro 1 year ago
    Terrific work. I am going to go out tonight and rip off your technique. I apologize and thank you, in advance.
  •  
  • PF BENTLEY plus 1 year ago
    Fantastic. Loved it. You kicked ass on this. I live on Molokai and you had more cars in 1 second than we have on the whole island!
  •  
  • Christophe MILET plus 1 year ago
    Awesome stuff! Well Done!
  •  
  • ilia djondric plus 1 year ago
    fantastic!!
  •  
  • Matthew Holdenried 1 year ago
    Unreal. The shot at 1:40 is amazing.
  •  
  • Diego Sedano plus 1 year ago
    Bravo
  •  
  • TR Umrani plus 1 year ago
    Nice stuff man. You have a lot of patience to shoot all of that timelapse.
  •  
  • eleanor tan 1 year ago
    This is neat!
  •  
  • tudor evans 1 year ago
    time laps, music, edit, perfect.
  •  
  • davide tonizzo 1 year ago
    Really original take on time lapse. You've made traffic look so organic.
  •  
  • Yann LECOEUR plus 1 year ago
    I literally had a heartbeat rise after watching this video :D
    Could be another trailer for "Tron Legacy"...
    Great work!
  •  
  • WILLIE GILES plus 1 year ago
    Awesome!!
  •  
  • Cgsean 1 year ago
    Hey~ Awesome stuff! Inspiring shooting and editing!

    I'm a student from CUC in Beijing,majoring in Digital media art and living in Sihui east~! So i feel fantastic for all of this~
    I'm completing my graduation work now.And I'll upload some of my works soon. Nice to know you such a good photographer in beijing via vimeo. I hope to be a friend of you and have a chat~
    :)
  •  
  • johan fründ 1 year ago
    you should ask vimeo for allowing higher bitrate for this video....
  •  
  • Robert Shaw plus 1 year ago
    Really creative and great looking time laps Nathan, beautiful chaos. 1.38 the cars are jumping over each other, awesome. Thanks for the how to article.
  •  
  • Ming Ming 1 year ago
    it reminds me of Blur's music video-Bang though I don't know how this effect came from.
  •  
  • Niels Bohr 1 year ago
    I love how you managed to take a tired effect and a VERY tired song and still come out awesome. The jumping cars on the overpass and the laser war in the tunnel were my favourites.
  •  
  • Baykal 1 year ago
    Any chances to get the source-video?
    I would love to use it in a live-visualisation for a party
  •  
  • Takuya Minakawa 11 months ago
    very good job !
  •  
  • andre palmer plus 11 months ago
    Wicked video... love it
  •  
  • Thomas Hollingsworth 11 months ago
    I'm with the folks who like the cars-over-the-bridge scene at 1:40. Don't recall seeing a timelapse that gave me that roller coaster feel.
  •  
  • nocturness 9 months ago
    what a perfect lights..Good job..
  •  
This conversation is missing your voice. Take five seconds to join Vimeo or log in.

Advertisement

Statistics

Date Plays Comments
Totals 71.5K 1,227 59
Feb 24th 0 0 0
Feb 23rd 18 0 0
Feb 22nd 16 0 0
Feb 21st 28 0 0
Feb 20th 22 1 0
Feb 19th 25 0 0
Feb 18th 22 0 0

Related lessons from Vimeo Video School

Check out these lessons to learn more about how you can make videos like this one!