Months in a minute
Most construction and event footage gets watched once. A time-lapse gets watched again, because it shows something no single visit can: a tower climbing floor by floor, a park taking shape, a festival site filling and emptying in a day. Owners use progress films in investor updates and at openings. Venues and organizers use event time-lapses to sell the next one. Social teams get a clip that works in the first three seconds.
The best films combine two kinds of capture. Aerials show the whole site and its surroundings, which is what makes a Detroit project read as Detroit. Ground cameras capture continuously between drone visits and supply the smooth motion a sequence of monthly aerials cannot. We plan both at the start so the frames cut together.
Repeatable positions are the craft
A time-lapse is only as good as its consistency. At kickoff, we set each shooting point by position, height, heading and camera angle, log it, and return to it on every visit. We also fix the time of day, because shadows move with the season. According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, the sun rises at 7:58 a.m. and sets at 5:03 p.m. in Detroit on the 2026 winter solstice, about nine hours of daylight, compared with 5:56 a.m. to 9:12 p.m. in late June. A capture window chosen in July has to still work in December, so midday slots are often the safest for a year-long series.
Tall buildings have one useful exception in the rules. Part 107 caps flights at 400 feet above ground level, but §107.51 allows higher flight within 400 feet of a structure, up to 400 feet above its top. For a high-rise, that keeps the rooftop in frame as the building climbs. Our construction progress guide covers cadence and what a 12-month program includes.
Hyperlapse and event time-lapse
A hyperlapse moves while time speeds up: a slow push across the riverfront at sunset, an orbit around a tower as its windows light up, a climb over a festival site as the crowd arrives. It is flown within a single flight, so the path is planned and rehearsed before the light changes.
Events add people and restrictions. Part 107 bars flying over people unless they are part of the operation, under cover or the drone meets an operations-over-people category, so event time-lapses are framed from the edge of the site or from fixed ground positions. Downtown, the FAA closes the airspace within 3 nautical miles of Comerica Park and Ford Field from an hour before to an hour after Tigers and Lions games, which covers most of the riverfront. Our game-day guide has the details. Day-to-night sequences need anti-collision lighting visible for 3 statute miles during civil twilight and at night under §107.29.
Airspace for long programs
A year of monthly flights means a year of airspace authorizations. Much of downtown and the riverfront is uncontrolled Class G below 400 feet, but north of roughly I-75, Coleman A. Young International Airport’s Class D begins. In the FAA facility map we checked in September 2026, 189 of the airport’s 325 grid squares allowed LAANC approval up to 400 feet and 52 were set at 0 feet. According to the FAA, LAANC requests can be filed up to 90 days ahead, and further-coordination requests above the facility-map ceiling must be submitted at least 72 hours before the flight. We build those deadlines into the capture schedule, along with weather days and game-day closures, so a missed month does not leave a gap in the film. Airspace changes, so every flight gets a same-day check in B4UFLY or a LAANC app.
Start a time-lapse
Tell us the site, the start date and how long the project runs, or the event and its setup schedule. We will propose shooting points, a capture cadence and whether ground cameras make sense, then send a fixed quote. For construction programs, see our construction progress service. Get a quote.