Construction site time-lapse videos are exciting to watch! But why is that? Most of us can now only focus for a short period because the average attention span of humans has deteriorated greatly with time. If you think your construction project is awesome, and you wish to show it to the world and expand your business, time-lapse videos are a must!
These will help you nail the next big construction job and let the world know about you.
Video content is one of the most popular formats companies go with to increase their demand, their sales, and their audience! Capturing a perfect time-lapse video is an art, and like any art, it follows a somewhat different approach to what your normal video shoot-out would look like. Here at Studio52, we know all too well the power of time-lapse videos, and we wish to help you get that perfect video shot, no matter what.
Use Multiple Cameras
Using multiple cameras is a must. Your construction site is a huge system of connected processes and different build and logistic areas, and you need to show them all simultaneously. You cannot physically manage to shoot the entire area moving with a single camera. Plus, a time-lapse video is a string of pictures, a huge amount of pictures, and the end product will turn out to be a headache if multiple angles were used and the camera was shaken a lot. Using multiple cameras will help you capture every angle and every aspect of your construction site while covering and offering a detailed overlook from different construction locations.
Finding The Perfect Location
Placing your cameras randomly isn’t going to help anyone. You need them placed for them to capture the most “moving time”. Your construction project is a living, breathing thing and you want to show it as such! Consider the closeness here as well — some cameras need to be closer to show all the intricate details of the process, but place some further away to show the bigger picture and how all moving parts create the big thing!
Decide On The Best Shooting Time
Your shooting time has to be thought through as well. First of all, choose a place that receives a lot of light and isn’t in a dark area all too much. This will allow your cameras to have a wide period during which they can record the scene. Dark photos won’t do you good when compiling your shots for the end video. You can also set your cameras to shoot only during the day, as night photos will show almost no activity and are usually not good for time-lapse videos. Unless you’re a vampire company of course!
Find The Best Interval
Shooting interval is the key factor of any great time-lapse video. The ideal shooting interval is somewhere between 2 and 10 minutes, but if your time-lapse is recording a year’s worth of project, this can even be set to hours. What you need to decide is how gradual you want your video to be! If you want to get scientific about it, then there is a formula for your shooting interval. Let’s assume your project will take half a year, which is 180 days. Now you’d want to define the shooting frequency. Going with 600 seconds or a picture per 10 minutes will be optimal. This will, however, largely depend on the activity at your construction site. If there’s a lot of motion you should opt for a more frequent shooting. Take the desired time and multiply it by 24 fps and then divide that by the total time. So, in our example, this would be 600 (minutes) * 24 fps / 180 days= 80 fps. This says that you’ll need 80 pictures a day! If you’re only shooting daytime photos, this means that on average you’ll have 8 hours of sunlight per day. This means 80 pictures / 8 Hours = 10 pictures per hour. We already know that your shooting interval is 60 min / 10 pictures = 6 minutes, so you’ll take a picture every 6 minutes. Everything left to do is open camera settings and set your camera to take a picture every 6 minutes. Et voila!
Monitor And Back Up
Capturing a time-lapse video for your construction site can be a tedious process, but with the right equipment, it will be a breeze. One of the worst fears of anyone who has been involved in a time-lapse video is a loss of footage. This will not only get you back to ground zero, but you cannot deconstruct the entire building just for the sake of a single video! The best construction cameras have a backup option where they send the data directly to the cloud every single day, making sure those precious pictures cannot get lost.
Conclusion
Construction time-lapse videos are the best tools to market your construction business, showcase project progress, and entice interest for further business and profit. These videos will add visual excitement to your written reports with stakeholders as well. However, you’ll need the proper equipment and professional team to handle the job! IP cams are the most desirable option, both because of their cost and high shooting time. If you lack the time or skill, and equipment to create such a video, you can always talk to professionals! Here at Studio52, we’ve created a whole bunch of awesome time-lapse projects and have a base of happy clients from Great Britain to the Middle East, and India!
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