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A player serves on the Champions Tour at the Royal Albert Hall

News Time-Lapse Trends: time-lapsing tennis

26 June 2019 Kate

“Time-Lapse Trends” is a video blog series which draws attention to some of the many exciting trends in time-lapse production. We feature a new trend in each instalment, to demonstrate the scope of the medium and the various ways in which it is applied, ranging from the popular to the more obscure.

The sporting world is gearing up for the next big tennis tournament in its calendar: the Wimbledon Championships. So why not enjoy these tennis-themed videos we have featured?

Special events such as prestigious sporting tournaments involve incredible amounts of preparation and production; there’s much to be done before the fun and games can begin.

Plus, venues are sometimes utilised for various different sports and events, often with very quick turnarounds. Our popular time-lapse edit showcasing “A Year in the Life” of the Royal Albert Hall – a renowned multi-purpose venue in London – includes an intense stage transformation to make way for Masters tennis.

Time-lapse strips these processes of preparation down and helps to isolate the efforts made towards a finished thing. Our own time-lapse solutions have also been utilised by Wimbledon to help document certain phases of their major roofing redevelopments for Court No.1, which were officially unveiled earlier this year.

As we often point to on our blog, time-lapse can be effective when used in conjunction with other methods of capture.

 

Snippets of time-lapse form part of this (above) news feature by CNN Open Court, which investigates the “layering” process that goes into constructed the world’s most prestigious clay court at Roland Garros.

Other tennis time-lapse narratives

As a compressed representation of events, time-lapse sequences enable us to experience things in their entirety but within a much shorter timeframe.

Going back to Wimbledon, their own time-lapse video (below) depicts a whole day on their iconic Centre Court.

 

In just over a minute, we get to witness the court before it is opened up for play, the swelling of the crowds, the athletes battling it out in each match and the arena being shut down for the night.

As well as providing a privileged perspective, particularly for those who cannot be there, this also offers a unique all-encompassing perspective of the day’s events. Even for those who are lucky enough to visit Centre Court, this kind of video provides a macro view of events.

From videos like this, we also get a sense of the exciting and sometimes intense atmosphere that surrounds a particular sport.

Of course, this can look and feel even more splendid when the sun comes out, as this short time-lapse clip demonstrates.

Finally, it is not only on grass and clay courts where the magic of tennis comes alive. As the creators of this edit demonstrate, table tennis is also highly competitive and fun to watch through the lens of time-lapse!

 

Check out our blog about “Time-lapse photography for sporting events” to show how this method can be used to provide an alternative mode of viewing in various other sporting contexts.

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