I’ve been watching the construction of the new Bridgepoint Active Healthcare Centre in east Toronto with keen interest.  Diamond Schmitt Architects, KPMB, Stantec, and HDR Architecture had the vision for the new facility which sits in the heart of residential Riverdale.  In February I took some initial shots of the building.
Then I had the good fortune to re-connect with some old friends, Kristi McNeil and Steve Couzens owners of Big Sky Film Production. They just opened a new Flying Camera division called AerialCineMedia. Their flying camera platform is a fast and agile remote control helicopter that carries HD Cinema quality cameras to distances of 1500 feet and speeds of up to 80km/hr
Since the helicopter is small it can get very close to subjects. I thought it would be cool to use this technique to shoot buildings for architects. Bridgepoint Hospital came to mind right away. Kristi and Steve were game and so was Antra Roze from Diamond Schmitt. She suggested I contact Danielle Donadio at Bridgepoint and she loved the idea.
So Kristi, Steve and I did an initial scout of the building.
Since Administration for the Hospital is in the renovated old Don Jail, the consensus was to incorporate it in the video as well.

Then came the day of the shoot.
We were a very small self contained unit which made us very mobile.
It only took about an hour to get ready and it was time to shoot.

Since the building’s mirrored glass has such fantastic cloud reflections I shot some Time Lapse photography to add a little spice to the video.

Feel free to click here to see the final 2:00 min video.