Museum Christmas Tradition
The Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg gets into the holiday spirit every year by installing a 16 foot Christmas tree. The over 2,000 ornaments are hand made by staff and volunteers, with new ornaments added every year. The decorations are inspired by items in the folk collection, with the tree topper in the shape of a rooster symbolizing the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum.
In order to reach guests who may not be able to visit the Art Museums in person during the Christmas tree installation, the installation was brought to them digitally. This video was created using a specialty time-lapse camera that was programmed based on frequency of images taken and the frames per second of the final video file. The camera captured images 9 hours a day for three days. The footage was then edited in Premiere Pro to remove any sections where action is hard to see so there is continuous progress on the building of the tree.
The first time-lapse was created in 2016, with this video being made in 2017. Both were posted to the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg Facebook page. The 2016 video received 8.8k views, with the 2017 video receiving 1.6k views.