This video of Singapore's breathtaking nightscape will make you go 'wow'

Think Singapore's a sleepy city once the sun sets? Think again.

A hyperlapse video posted on Facebook is helping many see the Lion City in a new light. 

It's like a scene out of a sci-fi movie - tall buildings, bright lights, and bustling streets set against the darkness of the night.

Titled 'Overnight', the footage shot from a drone shows the breathtaking nightscape of the downtown area and has garnered nearly 140,000 views since Feb 18.

The man behind the video, Henry Poh, told AsiaOne in an interview: "There's a lot of beauty in Singapore at night and I believe it deserves to be showcased more." He declined to reveal more about himself, saying he doesn't "feel like they are important to the video".

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It may only be one and a half minute long, but the video took around 200 hours to complete - from acquiring the footage and processing the images to editing.

Describing it as a personal project as well as a technical experiment, Henry shot a whopping 17,000 images on a DJI Mavic 2 Pro drone before combining them into a video sequence.

The clip captured some of Singapore's most iconic buildings in stunning detail, such as the Marina Bay Sands, Gardens by the Bay, The Esplanade, The Pinnacle@Duxton, The Interlace, Reflections at Keppel Bay, and the ever-busy PSA Singapore among others.

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As slick as the video looks, he had to overcome a few challenges while working on it.

Henry shared that he often had to revisit locations to reshoot scenes. With the camera suspended in the air, he explained, the images would sometimes turn out to be unusable due to motion blur.

A lot of time was also spent on working with enormous file sizes (he had accumulated 700GB of raw footage) while post-processing the material. For example, rendering a single video sequence of the Marina Bay Sands could easily take up to an hour, he said.

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But before you worry about whether it's legal to fly a drone in these areas, Henry, who's been doing aerial photography for the past few years, told us that he took the photos outside no-fly zones and stayed within height limits.

So did anything interesting happen when he was out on his shoots?

Henry recalled filming the National Stadium during K-pop group BTS' concert equipment tests and hearing the excited ARMY (what BTS' fans are known as) singing along to the music. This was though he was quite far away from the venue. "I loved the amazing energy and dedication from the fans," he said.

Besides earning praise from Facebook users both local and from abroad, the video also brought out all the feels in viewers.

There were some Singaporeans who felt a wave of national pride.

For others, the video triggered fond memories, with a Facebook user sharing his recollection of Clifford Pier when he visited Singapore in the 1960s.

After watching the video, others were inspired and itching to do renditions of their own.

If you're wondering whether there's another video in the works, Henry revealed that he's working on one, but "it will be very different from Overnight."

Has this video caught your eye yet, Singapore Tourism Board?

lamminlee@asiaone.com