Spectate ability, safe for servers

[heptagonrus]

It might be nice to allow people make not only screenshots of their builds, but also videos, e.g. timelapses.

On singleplayer world it is easy - switch to Creative/Spectating. But on servers ...

On multiplayer servers it might be annoying and hard to ask admins to help with that. And existing full spectating mode might be abused by players to find ore and such.

Maybe if there was an embedded mode allowing abuse-proof spectating for players on servers it would be nice for advertisement of the game.

E.g. admins may allow players to spectate from a single coord or some limited area. So player requests the access, admin checks if the coords are safe, and then player can switch to spectate mode in this area, not requiring food etc. E.g. area encloses player's town and he can shoot video flying through town.

Maybe some afk mode would be enough. Or more complicated camera movement trajectory support can be allowed.

[redram]

For time lapse, would it be ridiculous to simply provide a block that acts as the camera, so then the player can place it anywhere they can access?  Nothing cheaty then.  Obviously it'd take a bit of work to get really high angle/overhead shots positioned though.....