Tokyo Sky Tree – Spinning Camera

72 pictures around Tokyo Sky Tree, 3 hours walking, 36 spots, some hours of Adobe Photoshop and a lot of fun making this video.

After I saw a the spinning video of the CN Tower made by Candy Glass Productions, I decided to do the same with Tokyo Sky Tree.

Spinning Skytree Tokyo

Steps to do it yourself:

  1. I opened Google Maps and draw a circle around the Sky Tree (around 550m. radius) and with the Shape tool, selected a dotted border, so I can have 36 equidistant points ;)
  2. Draw a line on a tape on the display of my Canon to have a vertical centered line and the exactly position of the deck.
  3. Walk around every point, taking as little time as possible, to keep the same light.
  4. Taking 2 shots at every point, about 6 meters of distance from each other. Doing this avoids the stroboscope effect and the animation is smoother.
  5. Align everything in Photoshop using a vector shape of the Sky Tree and some guides. Transform every picture and switch to the warp mode to adjust some pixels.
  6. I created a Layer Comp with every frame, so is easier to check previous and next frame with a shortcut.
  7. Every frame is a smart object, so I had freedom to adjust the motion blur I applied to the closest buildings and keep the original picture if I wasn’t happy with the transformation.
  8. And finally, using a script, export all my layer comps.
  9. Using premiere I made a 1 minute loop and used some free music for the background.

I discovered a lot of interesting streets when I was taking these pictures. It was very fun, and see the result is fantastic!

So if you live next to a tower, just do it!