About

Founder / Visual Engineer

Built by a Filmmaker.
Engineered by Experience.

The Chronos Project was founded by Chris Field, a visual engineer and time-lapse cinematographer specializing in autonomous camera systems, robotic motion control, botanical time-lapse, and long-term field imaging.

Chris has spent more than a decade building custom filming systems for documentary productions, research projects, and commercial deployments where ordinary cameras, off-the-shelf sliders, and consumer time-lapse devices were not enough.

Many of his studio rigs are custom-built 6–8 axis Dragonframe-controlled robots, designed for precision macro, botanical, and motion-control work. His production workflow also includes virtual production tools for planning, previewing, and executing complex camera moves before they happen in the real world.

Custom Robotics

Purpose-built motion-control systems for shots that cannot be captured with standard production equipment.

Long-Term Capture

Autonomous imaging systems built for weeks, months, and years of unattended operation.

Virtual Production

Digital planning and preview workflows used to design complex camera movement before deployment.

Production Proven

Experience supporting documentary, scientific, environmental, and commercial imaging projects.

Selected Productions & Clients

Trusted by Filmmakers, Museums, Researchers, and Industry

Since 2011, The Chronos Project has contributed specialized cinematography, custom robotics, engineering, and autonomous imaging systems to documentary productions, museums, commercial clients, and research organizations around the world.

Documentary & Television

The Green Planet 2 BBC

The Green Planet BBC

Our Living Planet Netflix

Omnivore Apple TV+

National Parks USA National Geographic

Plant Life Speculative Films

YUM Gédéon Programmes

SuperSeeds ZED France

Big Pacific NHNZ / PBS

The American Farm Bobcat Studios

Bili Bean Independent Film

Engineering & Technology Partners

BBC Natural History Unit

Wildstar Films

Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York Botanical Garden

DroneSeed / Mast Reforestation

Bayer Trivolt

Caterpillar Mining Truck Build

Laowa

Kessler Crane

ManMadeMedia

Solaria Film

Fennworld

Products, Platforms, and Specialized Systems

Chronos Edge

Biolapse LT

Chronos Rail

Lens Apparatus

Chronos HD Slider

Chronos Lite Slider

MP6X Motion Platform

Watchman Capture Systems

The Origin Story

It Started Because the Tool Did Not Exist

The Chronos Project began in late 2011, not with investors or a business plan, but with a simple problem. Professional motion control systems were expensive, and Chris Field wanted to make time-lapse films. So he started building the tools himself.

From Open Source Slider to Professional Imaging Platform

Inspired by the first wave of digital time-lapse filmmakers, Chris and Kyle Philben began developing what became the Chronos Rail, an open-source motion-control slider with a full video build series.

People started asking them to build systems. That became the beginning of The Chronos Project.

2011

A Trailer Changed the Direction

After seeing the trailer for Tom Lowe's Timescapes, Chris became fascinated with digital time-lapse cinematography and the new generation of filmmakers pushing the medium forward.

2012

The Chronos Rail

The first product was not a polished commercial system. It was an open-source time-lapse slider built from necessity, shared publicly, and eventually built for other filmmakers who wanted one but did not want to build it themselves.

2014

Carnivora Gardinium

After turning a spare basement room into a small botanical studio, Chris released Carnivora Gardinium, a short film featuring carnivorous plants. The film gained major attention online, was featured by National Geographic, and introduced his botanical time-lapse work to producers around the world.

2015

The First Documentary Commission

The success of Carnivora Gardinium led to a commission for Big Pacific, an international documentary production looking for specialized botanical time-lapse of carnivorous plants. That project helped fund the first Dragonframe robot, OTTO.

Today

Built for Work That Cannot Fail

The Chronos Project now builds autonomous imaging systems, custom robotics, motion-control platforms, virtual production tools, and long-term camera technology used by documentary productions, museums, researchers, commercial clients, and environmental organizations.

The guiding principle has never changed. If the tool needed to capture the shot does not exist, build it.

BBC: The Green Planet Project

The Green Planet is a 2022 nature documentary series on plants and their relationship with animals, humans and the environment. It was produced by BBC Studios Natural History Unit and narrated and presented by David Attenborough.

Utilizing time-lapse photography, drones and specially designed camera rigs called "Triffids", the series aimed to show plant movements over prolonged periods, but sped up into real time.

Filming took three years to complete, and took place in 27 countries. Producer Paul Williams hired engineer Chris Field to develop new filmmaking technology for the series based on a prototype of the "Triffid" camera system in a Kickstarter video. Original music was composed by Benji Merrison and Will Slater. A tie in augmented reality experience in London and an online content initiative were launched to promote the series.

The Green Planet was a ratings success in the United Kingdom, with its first episode drawing 5.4 million viewers. It also received positive reviews from critics, who noted its production quality, storytelling, and environmentalist themes.

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Video

BBC's Green Planet brings plants to life with state-of-the-art timelapse technology

This was an amazing project, and a privilege to be a part of. Paul first reached out to me while trying to find out what the most recent advances were in botanic timelapse photography and he stumbled across my website. He reached out to me and not long later Paul flew out to Colorado to come see what I was doing in person. Plants rarely behave in the way you would expect, giving botanic timelapse a high failure rate and a high cost because of potential time wasted. I had managed to work out a filming process with my robot Otto that allowed me to set up the motion scripts for the camera, and pause/edit/resume, which gave me the ability to adapt to unexpected behaviors on the plants. Not long later I was brought into the project to build all the motion control systems which included 2 of my tower robots, 3 gantry rigs, three six axis field kits, several macro shooting systems for both field and studio use, and finally half a dozen long term capture systems.

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BBC’s The Green Planet Puts Plants in the Spotlight

In order to capture all of the content that would be needed by Green Planet, they also asked me to film for them. I spent the next 30 months filming over 20 different varieties in my studio. Working closely with Tim Shepard, the Master of botanical timelapse, it was an amazing learning experience and I learned a lot about plant care, lighting, set building and more.

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The Green Planet review – David Attenborough’s gobsmacking, awe-inspiring return

Ultimately the robotics turned out to be a smash success, allowing us to film things never done before in not only the studio but out in the wild. The Leaf Cutter ant sequence was done in Costa Rica by an amazing team of cinematographers that would have to film these segments piece by piece with clever spots to merge the footage into what in my view is the most incredible motion controlled shoot ever done in the field by a documentary series. It was amazing to see my robots out there doing all this work!

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