A flow motion time-lapse of Singapore makes it look like a city-building simulator

A genuinely amazing montage of Singaporean landscapes from earlier this year has garnered renewed popularity after a redditor shared it on the /r/Singapore subreddit. 

The two-minute clip (clearly, it took way more than that to create) was uploaded on Vimeo and YouTube by Emmy Award-winning cinematographer Tyler Fairbank in January — a product of two separate trips to Singapore. 

“This two-minute video takes us on a multifaceted tour through Singapore, seamlessly connecting the city's many attractions — from the Downtown Core to the temples of Chinatown and through the famously picturesque Marina Bay,” he wrote in the video’s description. 

Captured entirely on high-res still images, Fairbank went through the gamut of editing software (Lightroom, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop) to piece the video together. But it’s the little details he captured about life in Singapore that made it dazzling.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnlDyl2-oWY[/embed]

There’s the hubbub of office workers streaming across Raffles Place; the two girls hanging about on the second-floor balcony of Chinatown’s Buddha Took Relic Temple; the bunch of motorcycles parked illegally at Lau Pa Sat Food Court; the selfies taken at the edge of Marina Bay Sands’ Infinity Pool. 

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For those wondering about the style of the video, it’s called ‘flow motion’, and it essentially involves merging tonnes of images in a silky-smooth, dynamic manner. It makes it seem you’re zooming in and out while playing city-building simulator games, or as one redditor put it, it's like the opening sequence of The Simpsons.

It’s worth mentioning that Fairbank isn’t the first videographer to produce a flow motion tour of the city. Award-winning filmmaker and photographer Rob Whitworth — regarded as the master of flow motion films — was commissioned by the Singapore Tourism Board three years ago to do one with the aim to “capture the essence of Singapore as a culture-rich destination with innovative attractions, great food, diverse retail offerings, and world-class connectivity”. 

[embed]https://vimeo.com/167270801[/embed]

ilyas@asiaone.com