Singapore ‘City of Lights', exploring & capturing Marina Bay -

Singapore’s Marina Bay area, a timelapse movie + travel tips

My timelapse movie Singapore ‘City of Lights’ was shot during a 3 day visit to this island, city and country, all at the same time! This was my second visit here and this time I wanted to focus on capturing a different type of timelapse movie than I usually do. With the limited time I had, I just focused on the Marina Bay area for this movie.

Merlion Park - Singapore ‘City of Lights — Merlion Park in front of the Central Business District

Singapore ‘City of Lights’ movie

I use a zoom technique in Singapore ‘City of Lights. My cameras allow me to shoot my time lapses at huge resolution, much larger than the size of my video. So all I do is zoom in to certain parts of the video in After Effect. It’s fun to play around with, but the distortion of a wide angle becomes a problem if you zoom into a corner.

I shot all of the scenes directly at Marina Bay, Gardens by the Bay and Marina Barrage. At 0:55 you see the water & light show in front of Marina Bay Sands, the 3 big buildings with the ship on top of it

About Singapore ‘City of Lights’ City

Singapore is a pretty interesting place, I find. As mentioned it’s a city, an island and a country all at the same time. It’s famous for its huge harbor and airport, which bring in a lot of money and has helped the country to develop itself into a business center with incredible architecture. It’s such a tidy and well run city, public transport is among the best of the world. Singapore really is the most developed, futuristic city of Asia.

Because this city is such a fusion of Asia, you find the largest collection of Asian food here. With its Little India, China Town and all these other suburbs, you can get a real taste of the food Asia has to offer. It’s fantastic, I’m bummed I can only eat 3 meals a day, while there’s so much I want to try out!

Helix Bridge, Art Science, Marina Bay Sands — From left to right: Helix Bridge, Marina Bay Sands (during water show), Art Science Museum

Supertree Grove Light Show

The free 15min Garden Rhapsody is held daily in Gardens by the Bay at 7:45 PM and 8:45 PM. Whatever you do, don’t miss visiting it! The futuristic-looking SuperTrees or “mushrooms” are lighted up in fabulous ways on the rhythm of music. It’s a wonderful show for everyone that changes its music and theme throughout the year. So even if you’ve seen it before, it will be interesting to watch again.

Spectra Light And Water Show

Another great fun free thing to do at night is the water & light show. It’s one of the most advanced ever built. The music is composed for the show and it really adds to the magic of it all.

The 15min show plays daily at 8 and 9 PM, with an extra 10 PM show on Friday and Saturday. It’s right in front of the main entrance/exit of Marina Bay Sands.

Spectra Light And Water Show in front of Marina Bay Sands

Other Things to do in Singapore ‘City of Lights’

There’s many other things to do in Singapore and you can easily spend a few days in the city to explore things like The Cloud Forest, Botanic Gardens, the Zoo (I found the Night Safari quite nice), Haw Par villa, Sentosa Island and so much more. Above all, try the streetfood!