All technology innovations usually have two important impacts: They either make something you’ve always done easier or better, or they make new things possible. Construction time-lapse movie technology is doing both for developers, contractors, and other stakeholders.
Project insight and promotion in 2 minutes or less.
At monthly board meetings and weekly team meetings – often dominated by spreadsheets, reports, and slides – everyone gets up to speed on project developments in a matter of minutes with a time-lapse movie that documents progress since groundbreaking or the last meeting. Our clients also use them for process improvement, reviewing how work was sequenced and revising best practices for similar projects.
Beyond internal communications, time-lapse videos are engaging the public, as well as potential clients and investors. On projects with a high level of public interest, like sport stadiums or construction that impacts surrounding businesses and communities, time-lapse videos incorporated into social media and websites keep everyone informed and engaged.
They can also promote your business. With a time-lapse movie presentation, prospective clients or investors get to see not just a finished project, but what it took to make it happen. It can be a powerful visual that lends insight into your capabilities and accomplishments.
The making of an effective time-lapse movie experience.
This starts at the job site. Where and how you set up the construction camera effects the quality of time-lapse movies. We’ve developed best practices called the 5 P’s to guide the location of construction webcams for the best possible time-lapse video and project documentation.
After that, quality and utility largely depend on your camera provider’s time-lapse technology and production expertise. For example, our camera systems include three kinds of high-definition time-lapse videos: instant, custom, and professionally produced, each offering a level of experience and sophistication suited to the ways clients need to use them.
Instant time-lapse videos: Technology built into the construction camera interface lets team members review job site progress to date anytime with a simple mouse click. Algorithms for selecting the best images and runtimes yield high-quality time-lapse movies on the spot.
Custom time-lapse movies: Technology we’ve recently developed lets clients customize presentation-quality time-lapse movies any time they need to. It allows users to feature a specific time frame, determine runtime, and specify whom the time-lapse movie should be sent to. Users can even have the system automatically generate daily or weekly time-lapse movies in order to review progress.
Professionally produced time-lapse movies: Clients typically reserve these for documenting and showcasing completed projects. At OxBlue, our time-lapse production team hand-picks the images that go into every movie and edits them for professional quality. Techniques for correcting colors and contrast and toning down flickering (an effect of changes in daylight) enhance every image. The viewing experience is further enhanced with image stabilization, for a smooth transition from frame to frame.
For lots of people, when they think of construction webcams, they think of being able to see the job site even when they’re not there. As important as that is, it’s just part of the story. Another part is that with the right time-lapse technology, you can have a construction camera that makes new things possible.