Although it’s been awhile since we completed our video for the upcoming Hydro arena in Glasgow, Scotland, I thought it would be a good time write up a blog post about it as we’ve re-released the video with a slightly new edit.
The Hydro is set to open in September of next year and will host about 140 events a year. I’d been interested in the project since it had been first announced. Glasgow is already renowned as a great city for music, and picked up the award for European City of Music a few years back. Despite that, Glasgow has been turned down recently by big acts who refused to play in arenas they felt weren’t good enough, or where the acoustics weren’t ideal. The Hydro Arena is set to solve that issue.
I was pretty excited when we were approached by Martifer UK LTD with a request to film the roof being raised and positioned on top of the arena. It weighs about 330 tons and was to be be raised up 48 meters around a temporary structure in the middle of the arena, then secured in place by several arches. In other words, it’s a bit different from most roofs, and well worth capturing on video.
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You can see the process in the video below. The roof was raised by eight hydraulic jacks that pulled the roof up by about 5m an hour. It moved very slowly, so we created time-lapse footage of the raising and positioning to properly illustrate the process.
We visited the site over several full and half day shoots to capture the full process, and to give us time to speak with construction crew members about the work and their involvement in it. This meant we could put together a video for online viewing that covered the construction process accurately.
Before we were let on site we had to get set-up with all the necessary PPE equipment to make sure we would be safe and visible on site. So, with our hard-hats, high visibility gear and steel toe-capped boots, we headed onto the site of Glasgow’s newest arena, to film what some refer to as the most complex feat of engineering in Scotland this year.
One of the most fun moments of the shoot was when we were lifted to the top of the temporary tower in the middle of the arena. As there was no stairway to reach the top, I was strapped into a wire box and lifted by crane to the very top, then lowered onto the platform there. You can see some of the footage from the airlift in the final video above. The view was stunning, and being lifted to the top meant that I could get footage of the hydraulics and machinery that was lifting the roof.
It was a great shoot, and we got some really awesome shots of the process and the techniques used to raises the roof on the Hydro. The Hydro isn’t our only work on a construction site though. Recently we’ve been sending camera operators to unfinished wind farms, renovated water treatment plants, and unfinished data centres. We provide video of the construction work to be used in future promotional videos.
I’m looking forward to next year, when I can go to a gig at The Hydro arena, look up, and know that a while back I was standing on the top of this building, recording it being constructed. It’s set to become another landmark for Glasgow, and it’s great to know that we were a part of what put it there.
