Austin filmmaker Andrew Takano is getting plenty of hits on YouTube for his incredible short films featuring Austin’s landscape, shooting everything from the Capitol building to various landmarks including the Pennybacker Bridge and City Hall. But his latest creation may be his best yet.
Set to songs from artists such as Home, a producer based in Florida, each video Takano releases remains popular with Austinites and film enthusiasts around the world. Editing his films using programs such as Lightroom and Sony Movie Studio, Takano achieves the fast and flitting images viewers see with a technique called hyperlapse, which is achieved by taking still photographs from a tripod and then moving the set-up a few inches between each photo.
Takano first began experimenting with time lapse film several years ago, as a way to get a break from his 70-hour a week study sessions as he pursued a PhD in aerospace engineering at UT Austin. In a recent interview with the University of Texas, Takano elaborated on his thoughts about the difference between engineering and the creative aspects of photography. “In engineering, there are physical laws and constraints like budgets and hardware limitations that conspire to drive you toward a certain solution,” he said. “There is not a lot of room for your aesthetics. But for photography, there aren’t really right or wrong answers. It all comes down to how I want it to look. So it pulls from this creative side of me that I don’t use in engineering so much.”
Watch “Odyssey” from Andrew Takano by clicking the image above.
