Hyperlapses aren’t anything new these days, even your phone can do them. But back in 1995, no one knew what the hell a hyperlapse was (the term was coined in 2012) so imagine the collective mind melting and freakout that happened when this video was shown off in 1995. It was shot on a 16mm camera by Guy Roland with all the effects being done in camera.
It’s really incredible how the first hyperlapse was so good.
Pacer can lay claim to being the first hyperlapse film, or at the very least, to being the precursor to it’s development. It was shot on a Bolex 16mm camera in Montreal, Quebec in 1995. Shooting single frames, all the ‘effects’ are done in camera. The film’s original negative was destroyed in it’s one and only printing in 1995. That print was screened once and telecined for posterity, and the print was never projected again.
The film would have fallen into obscurity, except for the low rez video version that was included in a VHS video magazine called Channel Zero in 1996. Other visual artists like TopherZ of the Dandelion Collective who saw that Channel Zero and began to pick up the technique, and with Guy Roland’s subsequent film, Spacer, in 2004 (later known as Kino Citius), the technique of hyperlapse took shape.