Practical considerations for time-lapses - last part
The post-production
When all the shots are in the can there follows the editing of them in the post-production. I use Adobe’s Lightroom for editing the raw photos because in my opinion it has a quite easy to learn GUI compared to other programs. In case that the light situation remained relatively constant throughout the sequence than it is enough to edit one photo from the middle of the sequence and synchronize all others with its settings. I crop also the photos to a 16:9 ratio for the later HD film. Than I export the sequence as a film out of the slight module. However as the standard film export presets in Lightroom use a very poor compression (low quality H264) I prefer to export a JPEg sequence at maximum quality.
I than open the JPEGs as a photo sequence in Apple’s Motion 5 and render them as a video clip with the better Apple ProRes codec. This codec suits best for editing the clips in a NLE (non linear editing) software, like for example if I want to use the Twixtor plug-in for speed manipulations of the clip (nice time-ramps or slowing down a clip).
If the light situation has changed dramatically during my sequence than I will have a hard time to edit the photos only in Lightroom. I would need to animate somehow the different settings of the white balance, exposure or of the gradient filters. For this there exists an excellent software, LRTimelapse (www.lrtimelapse.com ) which animates the different parameter values. It does also a tremendous job to level the exposure leaps during a Holy Grail time-lapse. The developer, Gunther Wegner, delivers you also a comprehensive manual of how to use the software. For removing the eventual flicker in the final video clip I use the GBDeflicker plug-in (www.granitebaysoftware.com).
After I rendered my all my project time-lapses to video clips I think over a concept for a short film with ideally a dramatic composition. The soundtrack plays an important role and a cut following the rhythm of the music may render a special atmosphere to the final film.