MGF journey to Scotland
MGF was 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 its opening. The initial idea was to film the first delivery of equipment to Livingston arriving on site, showing the journey from MGF’s headquarters in Wigan.
From Wigan to Livingston it would take the lorries around 6 hours travel time. This didn’t give us a lot of time to film! The lorries were 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 were then having to capture them on the motorway with their headlights on. This all couldn’t happen 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 traveling up the motorway at various points both as drone shots and also close-up shots.
An obvious part of the film journey would be the lorries traveling through the picturesque Lake District.
Once we 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 one chance to get it.
The challenge was to get far enough ahead to wait for when the exact moment of the lorries passing.
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 with 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 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.