Time Lapse Photography

Time Lapse Photography is a technique made up of hours upon hours worth of pictures, once recorded the pictures are compressed into a film. Time Lapse usually operates at 24-30 frames per second but in Time Lapse Photography the rate of pictures taken is usually at 1 frame per every 30-60 seconds, for example if it takes the sun 12 hours to set, you'd have around 720 photos, if you compress those photos to a video at a rate of 24fps the sun would rise and set in just 30 seconds.
When the the footage is played in real time, it appears as though the subject(s) are moving incredibly fast as with the shadows or growth of subjects over a period of time, this can be seen particularly in plants. Some common motifs are sunrise and sunset, ice melting, cloud movement, star movement, plants growing, people and cars moving in the street.

This technique has been used in both feature films and television, most notably David Attenborough's BBC programmes Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and Life but more exclusively Attenborough's 'The Private Life of Plants' (1995) the technique also features heavily in BBC one's 'Life'.