'Awaken' trailer released, features never-before-possible time-lapse shots

Make Earth great again!

The article references BBC Planet Earth. I'm deeply interested in the natural world and I'm also worried about our perception of it, in particularly our disconnection from it. Some producers of the big BBC NHU projects are starting to worry about what they've done. They were trying to convey a serious message about the natural world. But attitudes to the natural world have not changed in the way the makers of these programmes hoped they would. They're starting to realise that a lot of people who watch these programmes ignore the message being conveyed, and just see visual spectaculars, in a rather nihilistic way. We're facing dangerous climate change, and the extinction of a large proportion of the Earth's biodiversity, and yet people just act as if it's not happening.

This trailer left me feeling cold. It was a tour de force of techniques, but appeared to have no depth or meaningfulness. Maybe the full film will have more coherence, but the website doesn't give any impression of it.

1.) How do you one-up a drive-lapse / boat-lapse? Apparently, with a plane-lapse / helicopter-lapse. WOW....

2.) I swear, PLEEEEEEEEASE stop using M83 OUTTRO!!!!! It's like the Papyrus of timelapse songs.

Anybody who loves timelapse photography (or landscape astrophotography) really should check out Tom Lowe's "Timescapes". It's a visual treat for the eyes.

Technically perfect but after Baraka, I can't say my mind is blown. In my opinion, neither Koyaanisquatsi nor Samsara come close to Baraka.

Since everything went digital, everybody can do this "at home". Not on this scale obviously, but the effects when scaled down to your neighborhood area, you can get the same aha effect, without traveling for 5 years around the globe.
So damn you Ron Fricke, you just spoiled it for everyone lol

"to give audiences new eyes with which to see our world," ... I only see one camera, therefore this is more like pirate vision. This would have been infinitely more impressive had it been shot in stereo3D.

It's kind of sad that CGI is advancing to such a point where it becomes harder and harder to tell real from fake. Especially in very specific forms of film like time-lapses. As such, some of the shots in this trailer look very fake to me, even though the article states they are not (and I believe it). But it still somehow diminishes the experience for me from a technical standpoint. It's almost a question of: why bother doing it the hard way when you make it look indistinguishable from CGI. I realize that thinking doesn't make a lot of sense.

Now, with a film like Koyaanisqatsi, you *know* it's all "real" because CGI was still in its infancy at that time. It simply couldn't have been made with CGI. This certainty of it being "handmade" adds to the awesomeness of that footage from a technical standpoint, for me. Of course, that film also managed to tell a story through the use of imagery, and it remains to be seen whether "Awaken" (pretentious title) will do the same.

Reminds me of Baraka

And thank God!!

If you love this kind of stuff you really need to see Koyaanisqatsi (1982).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085809/?ref_=nv_sr_2

The low-light + stabilized technical achievement might be impressive, but I'm sure 95% of viewers would completely overlook that and see it as simply more drone footage, speeded up. The BBC Planet Earth's huge weeks-long tracking time-lapses are more impressive. Even Planet Earth left me with drone saturation syndrome (characterized by grinding teeth and rolling eyes)!

That was magnificent.

I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff. I watch a lot of BBC nature documentaries on Netflix.

Love the footage, but M83's "Outro" has been used as the song for, like, 90% of all timelapse montages produced ever. There exists more than one song! Let's have some variety!

Slow-motion-sickness.

Peter Jackson: "Alas! I should have used that top GIF on my Baggins trilogy!"

George Lucas: "Cowabunga! I should have used that bottom GIF on the Planet Hoth rescue of Luke Slywalker by Honey Solo!"

.

Reminds me of Ron Fricke movies...in other words, probably gonna be great.

Beautiful videos, but the description confuses me. To me it looks like a combination of slow motion and speeded-up motion, with some good image stabilization, so why make it out as something revolutionary?

Wow! No more to say.

Really loved the flying scenes. But please, cut away the rest. Flowers, kids, people jumping and swimming elephants. Unnecessary fillers. IMHO. More fast flying over interesting areas though.

BTW - the stars? Where they for real? Did the drone really stop and take a long super stabilized exposure at every image?

I would swear i have heard the same backround song, in similar timelapses, a hundred times.
(great TL btw)

Some unreal footage. Mindblowing actually. Really love the long shutter timelapses and the downright surgical camera movement throughout. Its harder than it looks to get good camera movement, and this guy just makes it look easy.

The full trailer is much more impressive than the two short clips would suggest - check it out, people! (and be sure to wait for the northern lights footage)

On the new tech. I guess the "time lapse effect" does not strongly come across in most cases due to a minimum speed required to have the helicopter move in a straight line, without erratically drifting up/down/left/right. For instance, at a tenth of the moving speed in the (otherwise beautiful!) river scene above, the result would look far more impressive. As is, the scenes including the fast-moving northern lights are best suited to Lowe's shooting method, and those are breathtaking indeed.

Just curious what advantages time lapse has over video?

Anyone else find it sad how jaded people act about this stuff?

If I had put in the work to capture some of these shots, and the work paid off and I got footage as gorgeous as this, I'd be so overjoyed. But here we see all this "ugh drones, ugh time lapse, so boring and cliché, yawwnnnn".

Mind boggling visuals.

I'm getting tired of drones, so I'm beginning to not like drone footage. Try to go somewhere nice and every time, there are one or more drones polluting the air with their presence and noise. Go away drones. New Kickstarter: "drone dropper".

So why not just shoot video instead of time lapse for sequences like the above? I don't do either so I honestly want to know. Is it the higher resolution from time lapse stills?

Wow! that was amazing trailer.