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Combining Time-Lapse and Stop Motion to Create a Mind-Bending Music Video

We've seen some pretty creative music videos in the past, ranging from a microscopic time-lapse to what looked to be a Google Street View music video. The latest creative musical endeavor that has caught our eye is a video by the California group The Grouch & Eligh (or G&E for short).

Working together with Colorado-based DJ Pretty Lights, they put together a video that combines traditional time-lapse and hyper lapse with stop motion for a mind-bending 'lyric lapse' experience similar to what we saw in Marc Donahue and Sean Michael Williams' Dream Music video.

BTS: Photographing a Lyric-Lapse Music Video Over the Course of Six Months

Back in August we shared a mesmerizing stop-motion video titled "Dream Music: Part 2" and created by Marc Donahue and Sean Michael Williams. The team spent 6-8 hours of work photographing every 3-4 seconds of the 8-minute music video. All in all, the project took six months to complete. The video above presents a behind-the-scenes look at how the whole thing was done, with director's commentary, deleted scenes, and a bunch of time-lapses of the time-lapse being shot.

Lyric-Lapse Music Video That Required 6 Hours of Work for Every 3 Seconds

Dream Music: Part 2 is an amazing stop-motion and time-lapse video by Marc Donahue and Sean Michael Williams that features a technique they call "lyric-lapsing". Using still photos, they somehow planned the time-lapse sequences just right, so that the singer in the video is actually mouthing the words as he scurries around to various locations. They state that the video is a "musical voyage into the depths of the subconscious", and that it was designed to "transport the viewer from their own reality into a world of dreams and at the end, [...] awake to wonder how we were able to take them there."

The magnitude of the effort is what's truly impressive. The creators spent six months shooting the photos across two states. Every 3-4 seconds seen in the video required about 6-8 hours of work to create.