Four-minute film on Abu Dhabi goes viral

A short film documenting life in the UAE capital, made and produced with minimal budget, has attracted more than 300,000 hits from online viewers.

The clip, Abu Dhabi 2011, was created by local filmmaker Beno Saradzic, who pieced together 21,000 individual photos of the city in a technique known as time-lapse filming.

The result is a four-minute film documenting daily life in UAE capital that has proved a hit with online viewers.

“People have copied it to their website and their YouTube so I actually don’t know how many hits the film has got but I’ve had 300,000 hits just from my pages in a couple of days,” Saradzic told Arabian Business.

“It was just a little experiment of what I can do and what the camera can do. I had no clue it would go that far and get me that kind of exposure.”

The film – made as a tribute to HH Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founder and late president of the UAE - was filmed over a period of eight weeks during March and April.

In addition to the photography, Saradzic also edited and produced the film.

“You need to take hundreds and thousands of pictures just to get a couple of seconds of footage. To have ten seconds of footage that you see in the film, you need to be taking pictures for about six hours. Roughly about twelve hours of actual work to get your ten seconds of video,” he said.

Several Abu Dhabi government entities have contacted regarding future collaboration. Fans of Abu Dhabi 2011 can expect more of Saradzic’s short films in the future.

“Absolutely, I’m going to make a lot more short films,” he said.

Click on the video link below to watch the film: