The use of hyperlapse videos has become a staple in filmmaking, especially when it comes to putting together visually intriguing montages. As stunning as a well-made hyperlapse may be, it seems to be considered a bit “hacky” lately as more and more content creators tend to overuse it extensively in their projects.
Filmmaker Benn Jayms Tkalcevic (Benn TK), however, takes a bit different approach with his own interpretation of hyperlapse dubbed as the Gimbal Hyperzoom Transition. Let’s find out how you can pull this off on your own in Premiere Pro and After Effects CC.
In a nutshell, this custom effect features a fast-moving hyperlapse with seamless transitions in between shots creating a surreal yet captivating visual aesthetic. First and foremost, you’ll need a gimbal set to follow mode to replicate this technique.
Using this setup will allow you to control the gimbal’s pan movements while preventing any accidental tilts or rolls. Secondly, for the best results, Tkalcevic recommends shooting with a focal length of 16-24mm while moving as steadily as possible from location to location.
Once you’ve shot all your footage, import your clips into Premiere Pro and add them to your timeline. It’s also highly recommended to put clips with similar camera movements side-by-side to ensure a seamless transition. After you’ve organized your videos, you’ll need to send those into After Effects for compositing by selecting them, right-clicking and then choosing Replace With After Effects Composition.
To speed up your footage in After Effects, right-click on any clip and go to Time > Enable Time Remapping. Next, create a keyframe at the end of the selected clip. Drag the end keyframe you’ve created closer to the start keyframe, then shorten the duration of your video to match the position of the end keyframe.
Repeat this for all the other clips in your composition. Now, to get a smooth transition between clips, you need to create a dissolve effect and make the necessary adjustments accordingly just as shown in the video tutorial.
To further blend the clips together, you can consider creating transition masks using a similar technique to the dissolve transition. This can be done by having the start of Clip B overlapping with the end of Clip A. Rather than fiddling opacity, create a mask on Clip B and animate the mask to fill the frame.
Finally, to help give the video the zoom-like aesthetic, you’ll want to add some motion blur into the scene. This can be done by creating a new adjustment layer, adding the CC Force Motion Blur effect, then changing the Motion Blur Sample to 30. Optionally, you can increase the Motion Blur Sample to a higher number for a smoother transition. Keep in mind, though, that this extra step may increase rendering times significantly.
[source: Benn TK]
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