MGF journey to Scotland
MGF were opening a new depot in Livingston, Scotland. This would be their first depot outside of England and they wanted an exciting, short video to announce it’s opening. The initial idea would be to film the first lot of products arriving on site, showing their journey from MGF’s headquarters in Wigan.
From Wigan to Livingston it would take the lorries around 4 hours travel time. This didn’t give us a lot of time to film! The lorries would be leaving Wigan at 6am in the dark. We would need to be on site and ready to film as soon as they were leaving the depot. We would then also need to capture them on the motorway will their headlights on. This could obviously all not be done with one camera operator. It would also require accurate timing so that we didn’t miss the lorries passing by. We could not afford to get this wrong.
We also had the headache of needing to film the lorries travelling up the motorway at various points both as drone shots and also close up shots.
Once we finally got into Scotland we would need to capture the “Welcome To Scotland” sign on the motorway and then the lorries arriving at the Livingston depot. Again, accurate timing was essential so that we didn’t miss the sign as we only had the one chance to get it.
Both MGF and our creatives couldn’t have been happier with the outcome. It was the correct plan to have multiple cameras set up along the route who were constantly on the phones to each other to keep the next operator fully up to speed as to where the lorries were. By doing this we were able to detail the journey all the way up to Scotland. Clever use of a GoPro allowed us to capture the MGF signage on the lorry along with the Scotland border sign.
We used the drone in Wigan to show that it was dawn and the lorries were leaving the depot. We also used it to capture the essential footage of the lorries travelling through the Lake District and then finally arriving at the Livingston depot.
We had a car travelling along the journey with an on-board camera operator so that we were able to capture all of the close up shots of the lorry wheels, drivers and cargo.
Using all of these techniques we were able to produce a wonderful video for MGF that they used to full effect to promote the opening of their Livingston depot