THE CHALLENGE
In July 2017 construction began on a brand new facility on the edge of the University of Warwick’s main campus- the Sport & Wellness Hub. The University of Warwick and Warwick Sport awarded the £37M build contract to leading construction company, Willmott Dixon. Given the working relationship we’d enjoyed with them over many years, they in turn invited us to document and showcase the circa eighteen-month build. The projects completion is set for March 2019.
Working closely with project manager, Nick Preedy, we have already visited site for the new Sport & Wellness Hub several times to install our long term time lapse systems and conduct on-the-ground filming. The footage captured will form a series of several short videos updating interested parties on the progress of the construction process. These will be released in sequence ahead of the intended master ‘showcase’ video, to be edited shortly after the build is complete. The first two of these, covering the groundworks and steelworks stages of construction, have been completed and can be watched above.
THE APPROACH
As a time lapse and video production company, winning the chance to work on the Sport & Wellness Hub project is an opportunity made all-the sweeter by the fact that it was directly influenced by a previous project we worked with Willmott Dixon Construction on; BioCity, Nottingham (click here to view film). While principally our approach would be the same (long term time lapse capture and several on-the-ground filming days) there are a few differences to the Sport & Wellness Hub site that has informed our approach.
One key difference is that unlike BioCity, this project has no demolition to complete before preparing the ground and building. Rather, the site was used as arable land previously and so earthworks could begin immediately. With the lack of on site structures, the challenge then became finding a sustainable place to install our long term time lapse camera. Thanks to excellent planning and communication with Willmott Dixon we were able to mount on and run power from the newly installed site cabins. This now gave us the perfect vantage point at the correct distance from the target site and all in advance of ground being broken.
With the static time lapse now operational and being remotely monitored by us at base, we can focus on capturing video and short term time lapse on site. Communication is, again, very important in maximising our time and resources. As a team we are constantly checking weather forecasts and receiving updates on site progress. This is allowing us to target days where new, important and visually interesting activities are taking place.
THE RESULT
At the time of publishing this article, the construction programme is less than a third of the way through. Everything is so far on, or just ahead of target, with cold weather being the only potential foreseen delay. Our next visit will be early in the new year in order to capture some more on the ground footage for inclusion in our third update video. To date, we have published five short edits.
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