News 5 benefits of time-lapse for retail developments

Time-lapse photography can offer many opportunities for developments in any number of retail settings. Here, we discuss five particular benefits of time-lapse for retailers of various kinds.

Works can range from important on-site developments such as an internal fit-out, the construction of an entirely new commercial venue, or more of a way to understand how customers navigate a retail environment.

Whatever it is you are looking to achieve by documenting your retail project, time-lapse can be adapted to suit various environments but delivers the same visual qualities.

1. Access to a complete visual record of your project

Images which are generated regularly by a time-lapse camera form a working archive. As a project progresses, retailers can dip in and out of a growing collection of images.

Producing high quality images at regular set intervals are as powerful and compelling as they are useful: they convey instant information about the organisation of the job, allow remote supervision of certain tasks, and enable you to easily compare progress on a month-by-month basis.

At the very end of a project, this working archive becomes a complete visual record of works, which can be studied and referred back to at any point. Images of this kind rarely become redundant as their quality renders them timeless, and a means of looking back at progress.

2. Site monitoring for retailers

As well as providing the means through which to create a time-lapse narrative – telling the story of a completed project – an online viewing archive can also be used by retailers for site monitoring purposes.

Retailers, like most businesses, cannot afford to miss a thing. Professional time-lapse companies can deliver around-the-clock capture and access camera systems via remote means so that all elements of a project can be overseen.

Not only is this useful for construction purposes – to keep track of practical progress on site – this is also beneficial to retailers who wish to monitor processes other than building progress. Site monitoring can provide vital information about traffic and crowd flow in certain retail sites, for example.

Above: we successfully provided time-lapse site monitoring for one of Tesco’s UK stores, enabling their consultants Transport Planning Associates to monitor traffic flow and gain important visual information about how the car park is used.

3. High quality visual transformation

Ultimately, the images captured from a time-lapse camera are then carefully edited and assorted into a narrative sequence.

Creating a visual impression of an entire project, a time-lapse video is a marketable product of your retail business. Showcasing these developments is crucial to stay ahead of other retailers and to provide evidence of success to your stakeholders and customers.

Decent professional providers will use their skill and expertise to tailor content to your own individual brand. Such post-produced edits are also adaptable for your company’s webpage, crucial meetings, as well as conference and other network proceedings.

A visual record of your store being built will surely go much further than construction logs or before and after images. For retail especially, watching the transformation of a bare structural skeleton into a stylish commercial venue within minutes can have a significant impact.

4. Dynamic storytelling

Above: our time-lapse edit commissioned by Vision Express utilised a combination of stationary time-lapse solutions and video in order to capture the level of detail and perspective involved in the transforming their Oxford Street flagship store. See our completed time-lapse edit here.

As well as manipulating time to show progress at an increased speed, time-lapse can also be applied in sequence along with other media methods.

In the same way that time-lapse may require several different cameras and camera positions to communicate a comprehensive perspective of a particular project, a sequence may also benefit from real-time footage, or high quality photography stills.

Video capture, for example, may allow you to get closer to particular details (such as workers putting the finishing touches to shop shelves during a fit-out) than a stationary time-lapse camera can relay. On the other hand, time-lapse is more efficient at communicating long-term progress (such as the construction of a commercial structure).

Bringing together multiple visual approaches can enhance the pace and depth of the narrative being told.

5. Social media marketing

Time-lapse videos are also becoming an increasingly popular genre of consumable media.

Platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook engage their audiences with images and videos continuously. Time-lapse videos are therefore a seamless addition to a client’s social media feed; easily shared between platforms and the wider public.

An eye-catching edit is also a way of you and your retail business to stand out among other competitors in what is a highly saturated marketplace.

Time-lapse is a must-have on your retail site, regardless of subject, duration and how you want to utilise the finished product. Professionally edited sequences are useful to retailers and consumers alike because of the possibilities they present for telling stories about the everyday successes in the retail sector.