How to Make an Awesome Stop-Motion, Hyperlapse Video
Insta360 recently released the Insta360 Flow smartphone stabilizer, and it can do some amazing things for stop-motion video creation. However, users don’t need the AI-powered Flow gimbal to take advantage of these awesome stop-motion and hyperlapse video tips.
As content creator Winga shows in the above video, the Insta360 Flow enables some incredible shots. While partially an advertisement for the Insta360 Flow, the techniques and shots Winga captures can be achieved using any camera and a tripod. However, the Insta360 Flow does make it easier to shoot handheld and users only need a smartphone.
While explaining his shooting process, Winga touches on some important features of the Insta360 Flow that helped make the stop motion video easier to create, including the gimbal’s AI-powered tracking. Without this feature, photographers must manually keep the subject in a specific area of the frame, or edit the source photos when creating the timelapse video.
Even with the Insta360 Flow’s intelligent features, there are some issues to watch out for when crafting a similar stop-motion video, no matter what gear a person has. It’s important the subject has a consistent position and pose. While a mechanized stabilizer can track the subject, the final video will look strange if the photographer isn’t keeping important parts of the frame consistent from shot to shot.
Winga still needed to do extensive editing to create the incredible final product. He used image editing tools to remove pedestrians from each scene and performed transformations to ensure consistent actor position and posing. Even issues that seem minor in a handful of frames can upset the flow of the video when viewed in sequence.
Winga’s video isn’t entirely stop motion, though, as Winga also used a dolly zoom video technique, originally made famous by filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock. This effect is enabled by the accompanying Insta360 Flow app, which allows users to create a special effect wherein the subject remains the same size while the rest of the scene shifts. It can also be achieved in-camera without a special app using a zoom lens, although it can also be created in post-production.
While the Insta360 Flow is capable of producing great content, PetaPixel’s review notes that there are some issues with the device’s performance as a gimbal, even though its AI tracking is well executed. There’s a lot to like about the Insta360 Flow, although some limitations may prevent it from being a good choice for certain types of content creation.
Whether a person has the Insta360 Flow, Winga’s video tutorial offers creative ideas for timelapse photography that anybody can integrate into their toolkit.
Image credits: Insta360
