Honey, I shrank Melbourne and Sydney

Miniature metropolises: a short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Melbourne, Australia. Picture: Nathan Kaso Source: Supplied

• Designer captures beauty of Australia's biggest cities
• Melbourne film follows earlier success shooting Sydney
• 10 months shooting followed by weeks in edit suite

A TALENTED young Australian graphic designer has won a coveted Staff Pick on video-sharing website Vimeo for his latest tilt-shift time-lapse magnum opus.

Melbournian Nathan Kaso won rave reviews earlier this year when his short film Toy Boats, capturing a day in the life of Sydney’s harbour and beaches, was recognised by editors on Vimeo, the website dubbed "the cool kids YouTube."

Buoyed by his success, Kaso has now released his debut homage to his home town, a four minute masterpiece entitled Miniature Melbourne.

Miniature metropolises: a short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Melbourne, Australia. Picture: Nathan Kaso

Miniature Melbourne from Nathan Kaso on Vimeo.

"I’ve been doing time-lapses for a couple of years, mainly with landscape photography," explains Kaso.

"There are lots of tricks to pick-up along the way."

Miniature metropolises: a short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Melbourne, Australia. Picture: Nathan Kaso

Time-lapses are a series of still images taken at set intervals, then edited into a video.

So far so formulaic.

What sets Kaso's wonderful work apart from regular time-lapse is that he mashes it up with tilt-shift. An increasingly popular photographic technique, tilt-shift blurs the edges of an image around an area in focus, making it seem as if the scene captured is in miniature.

Miniature metropolises: a short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Melbourne, Australia. Picture: Nathan Kaso

"Tilt-shift is actually pretty easy to do if you know how," says Kaso.

"The main thing is to shoot from a high angle at a flat perspective with a zoom lens."

The new film is mostly shot from the look-out of the Eureka Tower, the 297m tower that dominates Melbourne.

Miniature metropolises: a short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Melbourne, Australia. Picture: Nathan Kaso

"The Chinese New Year scenes were shot from a car park, other shots were filmed from bridges. I did a lot of walking around looking for open roofs"

"The whole project was shot over ten months, starting in July last year," explains Kaso.

"I bought an annual pass for the Eureka, which gave me nine or ten trips to the highest point in the city to shoot without restrictions - well, you have to shoot though glass, but it’s surmountable.”

Miniature metropolises: a short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Melbourne, Australia. Picture: Nathan Kaso

Why is tilt-shift such a popular technique? "It offers a refreshing perspective on things, makes the viewer look at the scene in a different way, makes it look fun and cute."

Toy Boats from Nathan Kaso on Vimeo.

Miniature metropolises: a short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Sydney, Australia. Picture: Nathan Kaso

Simon Crerar is News Limited's Visual Story Editor. Follow him at twitter.com/simoncrerar

Miniature metropolises: a short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Sydney, Australia. Picture: Nathan Kaso

Miniature metropolises: a short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Melbourne, Australia. Picture: Nathan Kaso

Miniature metropolises: a short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Melbourne, Australia. Picture: Nathan Kaso

Miniature metropolises: a short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Sydney, Australia. Picture: Nathan Kaso

Miniature metropolises: a short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Sydney, Australia. Picture: Nathan Kaso

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