Motherboard

You may have already lost your socks to Sam O’Hare’s short paean to New York, The Sandpit. It’s inspired by lyrical films like Koyaanisqatsi and time-lapse tilt shift photography, the meticulous technique that can make bulldozers look like Matchbox cars. Though the video isn’t true tilt-shift, O’Hare managed to get the impressive effect of a miniature New York in post-production using not video but thousands of continuously shot stills. Think of it as an exercise in visual Auto Tune.

How did you shoot The Sandpit?
SAM O’HARE: It is shot on a Nikon D3 (and one shot on a D80), as a series of stills. I used my Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 lenses for all of these shots. Most were shot at 4fps in DX crop mode, which is the fastest the D3 could continuously write out to the memory card. The boats had slower frame rates, and the night shots used exposures up to two seconds each. The camera actually has an automatic cut off after 130 shots, so for longer shots I counted each click and quickly released and re-pressed the shutter release after 130 to keep shooting.

That has to be a lot of stills.
I shot over 35,000.

Holy sht.*
No kidding.

How did you capture the mini look?
I did some initial tests a while back using a rented 24mm tilt-shift lens, which is the standard way to do this. However, after my tests, I found it made much more sense to do this effect in post, rather than in camera. Shooting tilt-shift requires a tripod, as it is very hard to stabilise afterwards, and gives less flexibility in the final look. I opted to shoot it on normal lenses, which allowed me options in the depth of field and shot movement in post. I used a tripod for the night shots, and my Gorillapod (which is much more portable) where possible, but many locations—like hanging over the edge of a roof or through a gap in fencing on a bridge— had to be shot hand held, and the inevitable wobble removed afterwards.

That sounds kinda badass.
Um, sure?

How long did the shoot take?
The entire shoot was completed in 5 days and two evenings, during the hottest week of August 2009. Many thanks go to all the people who gave me access to rooftops, penthouses and balconies to shoot from.

So, you’re sitting with 35,000 stills. I’d probably have a Virgo-clutter overload and need a beer… But what did you do?
At first, I had a beer.

Good man.
The footage was shot as raw NEFs, which I organised and colour graded in Adobe Lightroom. I always shoot raw, as it gives you so much more latitude when grading. These were then output as 720p jpg sequences and quickly stabilised to do the initial edit. Once the edit was mostly locked, all the final footage was re-output at full 2800px resolution, tracked, stabilised and the DOF effect and movement added in Eyeon Fusion, using Frischluft Lenscare. I output the final shots at 1080p. Although most shots stay with the basic tilt-shift effect, some have focus pulls, or more complex depth mattes were built up along with some paint work to allow buildings to drop out of focus next to the in-focus ground. This would not have been possible if I had shot using tilt shift lenses on the camera, which works best with relatively flat landscapes. New York City is anything but flat!

The music track is amazing… How did that come about? Chicken before the egg?
Towards the end of the process I approached Human to provide music for the piece, and they very generously donated their time to produce a beautiful sound track for the film. It captures the feel of the film beautifully. I wanted the track to speak to what it is like to experience the many rhythms, pulses and moods of the city and the composition, especially the peak, does this beautifully. The vocals add narrative and pacing to the piece, and really help draw you through it.

Without getting too artsy-fartsy, what inspired you to make this film?
I have always loved time-lapse footage, and films like Koyaanisqatsi especially, which allow you to look at human spaces in different ways, and draw comparisons between patterns at differing scales. I also really liked the tilt-shift look of making large scenes feel small, and wanted to make a film using this technique with New York as its subject.

More of Sam’s work can be found at the Aero Film website as well as his own personal photography blog and his Twitter page. You can do the fake tilt-shift thing on your own photos at TiltShiftMaker