Day in and day out, it can be difficult to appreciate the beauty of what’s around us. It certainly doesn’t help when your morning commute is wet, dreary and shrouded in thick, gray clouds.
But when travelers visit Boston, they see our surroundings in a fresh light. That’s what happened when Sean Collins, an LA-based filmmaker at Bodhi Films, came to Boston for the first time three years ago. After attending a Red Sox game at Fenway Park – which Collins called the “best baseball stadium” – he felt like he discovered an awesome city. So, he wanted to share that with the rest of the world. What resulted was a beautiful, four-minute time lapse of a bustling view of Boston, titled “This is Boston.”
“During the rest of my stay in Boston, I felt this overwhelming sense of inspiration by walking through the city,” said Collins in an email to BostInno. “It was very empowering. I can’t really explain it, but it was as if the city was fueling my creativity. I tried to channel that inspiration into this video.”
Collins spent a total of six weeks on the video: three to shoot, and three to edit. Using a Canon DSLR and a few handy GoPro cameras, the video was shot in stills then expertly stitched together, with a few moving frames filmed using a slow-moving camera, and one shot even done by attaching a camera to a flying remote control helicopter.
Collins climbed to the top of parking garages and the Custom House Tower to get the aerial views of different areas of the city. With the help of a friend, multiple cameras were snapping photos across Boston for the film, and after going through some of the material, Collins realized they had captured some good footage.
So, with the intention of getting the beauty of Boston, “one of the greatest places [he’s] ever been,” out in front of people who might otherwise overlook it, Collins put together the time lapse video. Of the experience, he said: “I learned that [Boston’s] a spectacular city, with a culture that I can very much embrace, and definitely a photographer’s paradise.“
Watch the video below, and revel in all your Boston-based glory.
