COM grads produce a time-lapse tribute to Boston
COM grads’ time-lapse tribute to their favorite city
Erik Rojas and Chris Roewe graduated from BU last month with film degrees and an abiding affection for the city they called home over the past four years.
During their last semester, Rojas (COM’14) and Roewe (COM’14) combined their love of Beantown and their love of filmmaking to produce a five-minute time-lapse video they named Moving Portrait: Boston. Set to music by the band Explosions in the Sky, the project captures scenes of Fenway Park, this year’s Boston Marathon, boats floating in Boston Harbor, and a bustling Comm Ave. Since it was posted on Vimeo June 4, the video has been viewed more than 30,000 times. It got a big boost after being posted on Boston magazine’s website earlier this month.
“I’m in shock because we did it as kind of a personal thing,” says Rojas, who is from Lowell, Mass. “It was challenging at times—shooting in the cold and not being able to hold the camera because our hands were freezing, getting to go to the top of StuVi at 4 a.m. to get the sunrise. But we loved every minute of it.”
The two filmmakers became friends freshman year and have worked together on short films and freelance gigs ever since. Throughout their travels—both studied abroad in Sydney, albeit at different times—they made time-lapse videos and sent them to each other to critique. When both were back on campus last September, Roewe (a Los Angeles native) suggested that they make their first time-lapse together and that the star should be Boston.
They began the project in January, first making a list of quintessential Boston locations, and then adding all the places around the city that had special significance to them. Rojas and Roewe estimate that they spent about 50 hours shooting and editing their homage.
“Since we associated Boston with shots of BU, we shot around campus, different parts of the Charles,” Rojas says. “The project was more about what the city meant to us rather than a tourist video.” Roewe adds that “the biggest challenge was that there were so many shots—it was nearly impossible to cut it down to a five-minute video. I’m sure we missed a few.”
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