Nottingham City Transport’s epic time-lapse video!

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Time-lapse video is “Bang on Trend”, but to shine it needs a great subject.

When we first started working with NCT producing videos we realised the overnight turnaround of their fleet would make a great time lapse.

But this wasn’t going to be any simple time-lapse video.

It was going to have to be shot live and in one take, using multiple cameras to capture multiple scenes all at the same time.

Plus there were substantial health and safety issues.

In particular working at height at night, as well as a large number of moving vehicles in a complex environment.  In the dark. After a long overnight stint with no sleep.

We solved some of the height issues by mounting remote cameras.  But the A-roll needed two cameras constantly monitored, on a roof, in the dark. This meant harness restraints, roped safe zones, and rope access to bring equipment on to the roof.

In total six cameras were used. This was mainly the Canon 5dmk3, with a four person crew. We also captured location audio separately.

Timelapse camera in Nottingham

June had been chosen as the best time for the job, as close to the Solstice as possible, with the advantage of as much light as possible late and early.

Our plan had been to go in the week prior to the Solstice. But the weather was not cooperating with a never ending procession of low pressure systems. Finally a widow opened with only a 50% chance of showers on the night of the 22nd/23rd, so we went for it!

There is nothing quite like a McDonalds on a roof in the city centre, with the stars overhead and the nightlife on the streets below.

Despite rain earlier in the day it turned into a glorious evening.

With no weather issues the shoot went smoothly until the last bus was put to bed, a quick two hour kip for the crew in the boardroom, and then up for the first bus out.

90% per cent of views watched the video in full, (which is a very very very low bounce rate.) and comments were hugely positive.

This is what the transport industry marketing blog TransportDesigned.com had to say about it…

“As educational and insightful as it is entertaining, this video is a marketer’s dream. 

It’s mesmerising. It keeps you watching. There’s something oh so very satisfying about watching all those little double deckers filing through the bus wash and into their neat little lines. All cleaned and ready for bedtime.

It’s just brilliant.”

If you’ve got a good time lapse for your next corporate video, contact us to turn it into a marketing asset!

Ps.. One of the confusing things about time lapse video is how to spell time lapse video…

There seems to be three ok ways, time lapse, timelapse, or as we have done here, time-lapse.

Spell check says time-lapse video, my instinct is timelapse. A lot of places spell it time lapse. It’s all the same I suppose, compressing a long time into a short time, speeding stuff up. Not to be confused with hyperlapse (or hyper-lapse / hyper lapse) which we have also used in this video!