London Stadium is the capital’s most versatile sports and entertainment venue. Built as the centrepiece of the hugely successful 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and now the permanent home of Premier League team West Ham United. It continues to host athletics every year and is used for rock concerts, rugby, Major League Baseball, The Race of Champions motorsport and more.
The stadium recently installed over 6,500 square metres of advanced membrane solar panels on its roof, generating enough energy to power the venue’s annual event days and offset more than 200 tonnes of carbon annually – the equivalent of over 100 transatlantic flights.
Over the course of the six month installation, we visited the site to capture the progress from start to finish, flying a 4K broadcast-quality drone camera to collect dramatic footage from above the structure.
The shoot had its challenges. We had to work from the roof of the stadium, often harnessed to safely access take-off and landing positions, and moving to multiple locations to ensure VLOS (visual line of sight) was maintained at all times.
Pilot Ellis Watts said: “The shoot needed the combination of technical and creative skills that are Lobster’s lifeblood. The airspace is within the London control zone, and the ArcelorMittal Orbit sculpture towers over the stadium. We worked closely with the client and the CAA to devise a safe method of work that could be repeated week after week. The stadium itself is such an iconic building that it became the star of the show, and really demonstrates the huge scale of the solar installation on the roof.”
“We’ve worked with Lobster Pictures for many years. Their two fixed time lapse cameras have covered all the events and changes at the stadium for over eight years – and we knew they’d meet the challenge of safely producing this film. The story could not have been told in any other way – highlighting our commitments to sustainability and safe work in a beautiful film that gained engagement across all the major media platforms.”
If you’d like to tell the story of your construction or engineering project – take a look at the work we’ve produced for clients including Network Rail, Welsh Water and many more clients all over the world on our media page – and get in touch today!