Hey guys, it’s Gaba VR, and this time I show you how to create a cool street laps effect like this,
shooting with Insta360 X3 and editing on smartphone, using Insta360 Shot Lab,
or even on desktop, manually.
Let’ jump into it!
This effect looks very complicated for the first sight, and we used to shoot it with a greenbox or bluebox technology,
recording the talent in front of the one-color background, which was replaced during post-production.
But now we can make it even on the spot and much easier.
All we need is a 360 camera, like Insta360 X3, a monopod or a lampstand
and a couple of extra accessories for the best result, I will show you a little bit later.
It’s still a so-called double exposure time laps video,
which means, we have to record two different shots on the same location
without moving the camera, in the exactly same position.
The first one is a 20 seconds shot with the talent, standing on the spot,
and the other one is an “empty” shot with the background, without the talent.
This second video should be a little bit longer one, around 2 minutes.
And although we are using a 360 camera, we don’t have to shoot in 360.
This effect works perfectly both in 360 recording mode and wide-angle single lens mode,
but we can’t mix different type of shots in the editing app, so we should decide it beforehand, which format we prefer.
In both cases we should stand facing to the back side of the camera,
so the touchscreen will be on the other side.
It depends on your creative concept, but it’s recommended to stand quite close to the camera.
It’s the best if you stand in an arm-length distance.
This effect looks the best with moving lights or in other busy environments, like in crowded streets,
so it’s very important to highlight your talent.
That’s why my first tip is wearing light-color clothes on top.
It’ll also help during post-production, getting a better result working with AI or an easier job, during editing manually.
But there’s another nice shooting trick to highlight your talent …literally.
To get better lights on the face, and separate the talent from the background I use a portable LED light.
I mount it on top of my light stand and place the camera in front of this light,
using a magic arm, or in this case an item from the Insta360 Motorcycle Mount Bundle.
If I shoot in 360 mode, I make sure that the light is a little bit higher,
and it doesn’t illuminate the back lens of the 360 camera totally,
so I can avoid flares around the stitch line, and uneven light conditions on the different sides of the camera.
And of course, I can avoid the shadow of the camera to appear somewhere on the talent.
Making sure that both lenses are clear can help us to avoid any further lens flares, too,
when car spotlights or street lamps hit the lenses.
Here you can see the difference,
how this simple technique, using an additional light source can help us highlighting the talent on a scene.
And of course, during shooting the second video, focusing on the background, we can turn this light off.
Having our two different clips recorded on the same camera position,
it’s time for some editing and putting them together.
First I show you the faster and easier way,
using the Insta360 app and the Shot Lab effect, called Street Lapse.
I select Street Lapse in the library, then I connect my camera and select the first video, the so-called subject clip.
Here I can crop the video, cropping out the unnecessary parts on the beginning and the end,
and I can position a small yellow icon, too.
It will define the point when the whole video turns into street lapse.
Before that point, there will be a kind of intro to the video, just before things are going crazy with the effect.
And then I can browse the longer background video, too.
Of course I can crop it if needed, and I can still modify the keyframe to set up the entering point of the effect.
In terms of output video format I can select landscape, square, vertical or cinematic landscape,
and working with a 360 video raw material, I can play around with look of the video,
tapping on the screen, and moving the virtual camera or zooming in and out,
and when everything looks fine, I tap on Create Video.
After the preview was generated, I can Restart editing, or click on Export.
Before exporting I go to the custom menu and set the bitrate slider to the highest position, and then I hit Export.
After that I can share the video or I can save and find it on my phone gallery,
so I can transfer to my computer for further editing or using as a b-roll in any video.
The app will add a cool cinematic LUT to the time-laps part automatically,
which also turns on at the keyframe I selected beforehand.
As you can see, it’s a very fast and easy method to create this effect.
But if you wanna go higher than 1080p or add some camera movements in post,
or use a different color grading on your video, instead of the automatic LUT,
with a little bit more job you can edit it on computer, too.
This time I’ll use After Effects and Premiere Pro, too.
If you have Insta360 Studio and the dedicated Premier Pro plugin installed on your computer,
your .insv videos will work properly in After Effects, too, without converting or pre-rendering your files beforehand.
So, I just simply drag and drop my .insv video into After Effects and create a New Comp from Selection.
This is the Subject Clip, and I will separate my subject manually or using the Tracking tool in After Effects.
I select my subject, drawing a mask around it,
and then I click on tracking on the Tracking tab.
Depending on the moves, it can be a short or a little bit time- consuming job, to create a precise mask all along the scene.
Because the more your subject moves during recording, the more you have to correct the mask manually during the process.
But when it’s done, I just export this video only with my subject, without any background.
It’s very important to select Quick Time format and RGB + Alpha channels on the Video Output ,
so I’ll get a transparent video.
Then I import this video and the background video to Premiere and put this transparent video on top of the other.
I can even turn off this layer for a while, because first I work on the time laps effect.
I right click on the background video and select Speed/Duration.
I type in the duration of my Subject vide, so it will fit perfectly.
And of course, the longer background video you shoot, the faster time laps you can create.
And for the best time laps effect don’t forget to set Time Interpolation to Frame Blending.
This will create the motion blur seen in the automatically generated Street Laps video, too.
Looking at the preview window you can immediately see that typical look.
Now I turn on the upper layer to add my subject to the video.
As I kept it unedited, it still has a normal speed, while the background is speeded up to more than one thousand percent.
Of course, it’s still a 360 video with two layers upon each other, but as a final step we can easily reframe them as we want.
And there are a lot of possibilities.
I select both tracks, right click on them and nest them.
Now these videos will work like one single clip.
I apply GoPro FX plugin, and I’m ready to edit.
I can set up the output format,
which can be 1080p or 4K landscape, square, vertical or cinematic landscape, just like in Insta360 Shot Lab.
But this time I have a little bit more freedom in setting up the angles, or adding camera movements, using keyframes.
As a final step, of course, I can color grade my video.
If I apply color grading on the nested sequence, it will affect the entire video,
but of course, in this case I can apply different color grading on the foreground and background, too, if needed.
In some cases it can help in separating the subject even more.
Or I can add gaussian blur to the background to create some depth of field for a more cinematic look.
It all depends on your creativity and editing skills.
So, depending on your needs and time for editing
now you can create this cool double exposure time laps effect in a couple of minutes, on smartphone
or with a little bit more work, even on your computer.
But anyhow, I think it’s very cool, having such an opportunity to feature this effect in our travel videos or family videos,
not only in professional movies or music videos.
And if you like this short tutorial and my tips and tricks, please thumbs up
and for further 360 contents and tutorials, subscribe to my channel.
See you next time!