Little Lithuania – A Time-lapse Tilt-shift Journey

 
Lithuania, if you don’t already know, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is also beautiful.  Filmmaker Jorg Daiber combines drone footage, tilt shift photography and timelapes expertise to show the country off in a very different way.  Some of the older Lithuanian architecture already looks a little “toy town” (not an insult, it’s very visually striking) so the techniques employed here make it look almost unreal in its beauty.  This is part of Daiber’s Little Big World series – if you enjoy these, check out his others on YouTube.

This particular video travels from the amazing Trakai Island Castle (known as the watercastle) to the famous hill of crosses (featuredpreviously on Kuriositas).  You also get the opportunity to check out the gorgeous beaches and sand dunes of the Curonian Spit, then stroll though cities like Klaipėda, Kaunas and the busy capital Vilnius (where we also get a glimpse of modern architecture, too!). All of this in only 4 breathtaking minutes – simply wonderful.

Miniature Mountain Magic: A Tilt-Shift Journey through Four Seasons in the Alps

 

The Alps: at any time of the year an incredible place to visit.  And if one is to capture its intrinsic beauty, then it will take time and patience.  In this case, it too film-maker Joerg Daiber a year to capture a specific part of the Alps through all four seasons.

Schloss Elmau is a five-star hotel and national monument, nestled between Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Mittenwald in the serene Bavarian Alps, Germany. Located at the foot of the Wetterstein mountains, it is the only venue to have hosted the G7 Summit twice.

Daiber was fortunate to be invited to capture footage of the various activities in the area surrounding the hotel across different seasons.  The result is quite phenomenal.

Bless You

You may have had a moment or two like this: you spend an age working on a project only to get bored with it.  This is the case with the architect in this animated short by Philip Watts.  He decides to spice things up a little with his creation by introducing something that will set the (not quite proverbial) cat amongst the pigeons.

Philip Watts is a film and television editor, but since the early 90's he has been producing animated motion graphics for the television industry. He has also worked as a freelance cartoonist on a few occasions, and recently he started combining these two interests and making my own animated short films, hence Bless You which is a very cunning mix of traditional animation, tilt shift photography and something pretty much like Flash (that’s a guess by the way).  Who cares how it was made, ultimately – it’s great fun and executed with great panache.

City of Samba

You may not believe your eyes when you watch this. Created by Keith Loutit and Jarbas Agnelli, this is a tilt shift capture of the Rio de Janeiro Carnaval Party. You may have seen tilt shift movies before, but this will really make you sit up! It begins with a panoramic view of the city (including a helicopter rescue from the sea) and then, as night draws in, Carnaval begins.

It may not be quite the same as being there but this film captures the intense excitements as the floats pass by the immense crowds. Yet because of the tilt shift method employed everything looks tiny – you get to be Gulliver for a short time! You also get to see much more of it in five minutes than you normally would, thanks to the stop-motion technique also employed. This is simply dazzling!

Making The Leadenhall Building

We usually try to avoid unfinished pieces on Kuriositas but I think you will agree that an exception really had to be made for this. The Leadenhall Building in London is due to be completed in the middle of 2014. It has already attracted a nickname – The Cheesegrater – and it is being constructed by the architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners.

In turn, they have commissioned Paul Raftery and Dan Lowe to film the construction of The Leadenhall Building and this represents the half-way point. It is a very cool piece of film – I particularly like the tilt-shift techniques used as well as the hyperlapse along the river (but why did that get cut so short!?). When complete this will be a wonderful record of a project which is helping to transform London’s skyline for the twenty first century and beyond.

Toy Soldiers - Tilt Shift Time Lapse of Paris

This is a stunning piece of film.  The city of Paris is gorgeous from any angle - and this short film sees it tilt shitfed and time lapsed to the extreme.

There were four cameras used on the day, however most of the footage is from two that the film makers had positioned on top of a building on the Champs Élysées

The film follows a military march - perhaps Bastille Day? It is amazing how you can see the swarm movements of the soldiers: around the three minute mark you can see waves propagate in the group because the front row suddenly stops.  Extremely cool.

It was shot using Canon 5DMKII cameras, set on continuous mode.  It is surely one of the best examples of the technique that I have ever seen.  Bravo!