-- search string at vimeo.com, http://vimeo.com/search?q=japan+timelapse
Techniques vary from long video that has be condensed (extracted still frames), to timer devices or programs to snap photos (fed into video software for playback), or a combination of both methods: pulling from video, or pouring in still images. Scenes tend to be places with motion such as traffic points for roads, trains or people. Sunrise or set, clouds across the land or seascape, and flowing water are popular views. Music often accompanies the playback, either contemplative classical or piano chored, or else techno with rapid percussive feeling to accompany the speeded up perspective of compressed time. Field recording (e.g. the sound of flowing water to accompany a rice paddy time lapse) is rare. A few projects combine all of these things: still image, time lapse, full-motion (normal playback) video.
The value of foreshortening time (and perhaps the opposite, recording/presenting things in slower than normal motion, but not freezing altogether) comes from detecting patterns and relationships that otherwise do not seem salient or offer any sociological insight or significance. So beyond aesthetic novelty, these are thinking tools, or food for thinking. Cars zooming around, sunrises at crazy rates, and people moving like rapid robots can soon become dull. But the change in seasons, flow of air, water or shadows never seems tiring to watch.
Tokyo water bus (1 min.), http://vimeo.com/7144128
Roppongi Hills sunset (1 min.), http://vimeo.com/26781363
Hachiko statue (20 seconds), http://vimeo.com/27562931
Walking and Timelapse (2 min.), http://vimeo.com/92529217
Hakone cablecar (ropeway; 1 min.), http://vimeo.com/962369
Compilation "hayaku" (8 min.), http://vimeo.com/12112529
Hokkaido vistas (1 min.), http://vimeo.com/77701966
