[1] Running at 29 minutes, it is a flowmotion—a combination of a hyper-lapse, time-lapse, and regular shots—of the universe from 2019 to the end of time, with the lapse rate doubling every five seconds.

The film's soundtrack combines original music with stock audio; the former was later released in an album titled The Arrow of Time.

Timelapse of the Future was released on Boswell's YouTube channel melodysheep and screened on several venues; it also won the 2020 Webby Awards.

The film became viral, garnering millions of views and received positive reviews for its audiovisual craft, though some of the plot points were noted as mere speculations.

At some point, the supermassive black hole at the center of each galaxy will suck up all degenerate matter that fails to escape it, a similar process to the fate of the Sun.

Theories predict that civilizations could utilize black holes as a source of power and slow down their time to survive the end of the universe.

Finally, binary black holes might come to life, releasing massive amounts of energy as gravitational waves when merging.

On October 9, 2018, Boswell posted on his Twitter account an image of an early experiment of the film: a picture of an animated black hole.

The screenshot differs from the final result absolutely: the extremely huge years numbers expressed with powers, no moving counter, and texts directly on the frame, instead of on the lower hard matte;[5] There is not much statements about production of the film, other than that "Creating it required months of research into physical cosmology, where speculations about the ultimate fate of the universe are legion, and often contradictory."

Via Long Now Foundation, he then further explained:[7]My original plan was to make something more like an art installation piece where there wouldn't be so much talking and facts; it would basically just be the timeline and some chill music and meditative imagery of black holes that would just span for like 10 minutes at a time, and you'd get this abstract impression of how long the future is going to be, and how much emptiness there is.

He stated that the idea behind the theme is to "feel huge, open, at times lonely and eerie — in short, to reflect the future of the universe itself," and that he "also wanted to convey some sense of melancholy, as this story foretells the fate of our species in a pretty somber way."

The soundtrack's first track, "Sun Mother," uses a 120 beats per minute rhythm, increasing as the time evolves to "highlight the accelerating rate of [the time-lapse]."

[19] The film was released on Boswell's YouTube channel Melodysheep on March 20, 17:15 UTC, with the premiere being a paid ad-free viewing available on his Patreon nine hours earlier.

[20] The film screened at event venue 393, New York City on May 2, using the multi-monitor format but the year counter invisible;[21][22] his Patrons offered free tickets.

[23] Another screening in the Exploratorium, San Francisco, on July 25 at 9:30 pm PT took place,[24][25] with the last screening in dubbing by Atomic Studio project with voice-over of Andrey Lysenko taking place in the historic Rodina Film Centre, St. Petersburg, Russia, on November 3 on 6:30 pm MSK, participating in The World of Knowledge International Film Festival.

[26][27] A hosted presentation at the Treefort Music Fest— specifically at its sister event Hackfort Fest— was supposed to take place on March 28, 2020, but was postponed to either September 23 or 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[28][29] The soundtrack was mainly released on Boswell's Bandcamp (as it is his hub), but also on Amazon for sale, Last.fm, SoundCloud (select tracks), Google Play Music, Spotify, etc.

Analytics company Social Blade reported high rise in viewership and subscription as the video was released,[31] and is thus also categorized as viral.

[34] Aeon says that the film "impressively translat[es] theoretical physics and astronomically vast scales of time and space into 29 breathtaking minutes, [...] tak[ing] us [...] into the sublime of the unimaginable, with all the wonder and terror that might provoke.

"[35] The Long Now Foundation writer Ahmed Kabil says that "The effect of [the Sun's] demise coming so early in the video is unsettling, akin to Hitchcock killing off Janet Leigh's character less than a third of the way through Psycho.

"[7] Filmmaker Eugene Lee Yang said that it is "a breathtakingly brilliant education video that has rendered my perpetual existential crisis shook to its core.

We're in a golden age of explanation," adding "I always find this... odd, and must admit anticipation of that reaction is making me increasingly hesitant to post things like this.

"[41] Kevin Pang on G/O Media's digital publication The Takeout says, "I found the existential questions conjured frightening, but also sobering and breathtaking and beautiful.

Singer and actress Noah Cyrus released the music video for the song The End of Everything in collaboration with Boswell on May 19, 2020, in which she states that it is inspired by Timelapse of the Future.

And there's something really terrifying, but also comforting about that, when you think about how much fear and how much hatred there is in the world, and that will also end.For me, it really put into perspective how shortly lived our moments here as humans are.

We worked together on creating a custom short-form version of my original piece to fit the song, which is hauntingly beautiful, as is the rest of her EP of the same name.

[52] Many viewers were reported to be triggered with existential crisis[53] due to the film pace to the end of time being fast, and the representation of the size of humanity.

If we play our cards right, we potentially have trillions of years to live this moment and appreciate it as much as we can.On August 31, 2019, Boswell released a teaser for his next project, web series Life Beyond,[56] which discovers extraterrestrial life and human's location in the universe, in a slowburn and nonlinear narrative technique, filled with science-fictitious imageries while holding its scientific genre.

[57] It was then revealed that the web series is a spin-off to Timelapse of the Future, in which Boswell described it as "a more optimistic perspective of human life and our place in the history of the universe.

"[63]30:15 In the third episode, "In Search of Giants," it will deal with "making contact with intelligent life, intergalactic civilizations, and surviving the end of the universe."