Time-Lapse video, Building a Yacht

I’ve always been fascinated by the time-lapse movies of huge construction projects like what you see on the Discovery Channel. This was an opportunity to make my own miniature version.

The movie is made up of 2400 photographs taken at intervals ranging from one every 30 seconds to one every minute. Although this project took several months, the movie only shows a few decks of the yacht coming together over a period of 10 days.

Watch the movie then read the story.

The video includes audio; you may want to adjust your volume before beginning.

Here’s the story

I was involved with a full paint job on a 164 ft private yacht in 2007. A paint job on a large yacht like this is a major project. It generally involves removing all of the hardware (stainless steel hand rails, trim pieces, deck lights, doors, handles, tables, etc.) that is mounted on the vessels exterior.

After removing and cataloging thousands small and large pieces, we repaired and polished each piece to perfection in a separate area while the shipyard contractors carried out the painting process.

In addition, there are hundreds of less cosmetic, but no less important jobs that are completed simultaneously by the crew and various specialized contractors. It’s a huge undertaking that can last as long as eight months and cost around $1 million. Living large doesn’t come cheap.

When we reached the reassembly stage, (near the end) I wanted to try some time-lapse photography using the intervalometer built-in to the Nikon D200.

The camera was placed on a tripod whose feet I had taped in place to the deck. This way, I could take the camera home each night and leave the tripod and head in the exact same position for the next day.

Exposures were made in AV (aperture priority) mode at F11 and shutter varied for the light. Because the scene was lit with ever changing light sources, the majority of which was fluorescent I chose AWB (auto white-balance) as well.

I knew I would end up with thousands of shots and decided to shoot JPEGs in this case. This was a documentary experiment and RAW was unnecessary. All images were shot through a Nikon 12-24mm lens with the focus set manually. I put the video together with the iMovie program that comes on the Mac.

It’s funny how having a camera clicking away at regular intervals makes people act. You become very aware of the passing of time. Some people might actively avoid the camera click and make it seem as if they were never there, others will strike a pose, bare some flesh or just act like a jackass in time with the camera. As you can see, we chose the latter. Enjoy, TR.