The brief
Why this Linamar brand video had to be one take
Ask most people what Linamar makes and they'll say car parts. They're right, they're just missing most of the picture. Linamar was also building Skyjack aerial lifts and MacDon harvesting equipment, and working in medical technology. So when they came to us for two new videos, a brand film for the public and an investor film for the people deciding whether to back them, both had the same job: show the whole company.
The brief asked for exciting and futuristic, built around Linamar's own line, “the power to perform.” You probably know the manufacturing video we were steering away from: sparks off a grinder, a robot arm on loop, somebody in a hard hat nodding thoughtfully at a machine. It proves a company makes things. Linamar needed to prove how many different things it makes, and how far apart they are.
Our pitch came down to one goal: make the video as inventive as the company it's about. The other was leaving partners and investors feeling secure and optimistic. So we pitched one host walking through six of Linamar's worlds in a single continuous shot, each one lighting up as she reached it. No cuts. It's the kind of idea that only works if every detail is planned before anyone walks on set, so that's where we started.
The approach
Six industries built inside a working atrium
The original plan was to shoot in a big, brand-new Linamar facility before any equipment moved in. Lots of empty space, total control. Then COVID pushed the shoot back and the plan changed with it. We ended up building six mini-sets in the atrium at Linamar's Centre of Excellence in Guelph, Ontario. It's a big, open space Linamar uses to host events, which is great for a crowd and not so great for a one-take shoot that needs total control over the light.
So before a single set went in, we turned an event space into a film set. Lights were rigged from the ceiling and wired to a DMX controller, so each one could be cued on an exact word of the script. A small army of specialists came in. And we hung massive black drapes to black out the whole space, so every set could stay hidden in the dark until its moment to light up on the right script line. Then we built the six worlds:
Infrastructure: a Skyjack lift with a harnessed worker, raised in front of a 10-foot wall of pipes and ductwork
Agriculture: a MacDon draper header surrounded by corn stalks, with a farmer inspecting it
Transportation: a glass-walled office where a team spins a holographic car engine above the table
Power: a family room where a family of four shares a couch, a bowl of popcorn and the TV
Water: a lab testing water and plants, with jugs of water on the benches and pipes labelled “Raw water feed”
Medical: a surgery scene built around a real surgical robot, with a live monitor at the foot of the bed
Each set got a few seconds on screen, so every detail had to land fast. In the brand film, the family room plays under the line “powering vehicles, motion, work, and lives,” so we gave “lives” the most personal scene of the six: a family of four, one couch and a bowl of popcorn. The water jugs and pipe labels are there so nobody mistakes the lab for a chemistry class. And the Skyjack sits slightly raised off its base to exaggerate the height, with its orange popping against the grey pipes behind it.
On set
Two scripts, two audiences, two one-shot videos
Now for the part that made this twice as hard. The brand film and the investor film were two separate videos: same host, same six sets, same path through the atrium, and two completely different scripts. The brand version was a 45-second piece about where an idea can take you. The investor version opened with “from a single lathe in Frank's basement” and moved on to market position and the balance sheet.
So our host had to learn both scripts and deliver each one over the exact same moves: six marks of her own, eight camera positions and a new set lighting up behind her on almost every line. Then the crew had to nail that same choreography perfectly, twice, for two audiences who wanted very different things from it. No pressure.
The only way to pull that off was paperwork, and a lot of it. We broke both scripts down line by line into a cue sheet, and every phrase got its own instructions: where the camera is, where the host stands, which set's lights fade up, which background performers start moving. The lights follow the camera, so each set comes up right as the camera reaches it and your eye lands on one industry at a time. The transportation set's hanging light even turns blue for the hologram, and big orange pillars light up in the background for the last line.
Our Steadicam operator walked backwards in front of the host the entire way, stepping in a very particular way to keep the bounce out of the shot. Add 11 background performers, a lighting cue on nearly every line and two people moving through the middle of it all, and one slip from anyone meant going back to the start. So we rehearsed it like a stage show, actors and lights together, until the timing held.
Shoot day was a Saturday, on purpose. The Centre of Excellence is a working manufacturing plant, and on a Saturday it goes quiet: no production noise bleeding into the audio and no foot traffic wandering through the frame. Call time was 7 am, and the day ran in a set order:
A few hours of final prep and lighting checks
Full rehearsals with the host, the background performers and every light cue
The takes themselves, for both films
Each set filmed on its own, for the teasers and cutaways
We wrapped around 7:30 pm.
In post, our motion graphics artist tracked the camera through the transportation set and built the 3D holographic engine from Linamar's own CAD files, so the engine floating over that table is a real Linamar part. Our editing team cut, graded, and exported both films.
Everything those two takes turned into is in the kit below: both films, the six teasers and every format they shipped in.
Behind the work
Sixteen months from contract to launch day
From signed contract to launch day, A New Look took about 16 months. A pandemic will do that. It also changed how the shoot itself ran, in ways that had nothing to do with cameras.
Scripts locked in March, then everything stopped
Both scripts were final two months after the contract was signed, right on schedule. Then the world shut down. The shoot got pushed back months, post-production ran through the winter on the hologram and the edits, and both films launched about 16 months after we started. Along the way, an empty new facility turned into an event space inside a working plant, and the lighting and rigging plan grew to match.
A week of rigging so shoot day could focus on the takes
We spent the days leading up to the shoot building the sets, hanging the drapes and rigging the lights, so Saturday could go to rehearsing and getting the takes. Linamar's team was great about it. They kept the building open past five for the main build day and lent us their event space for most of a week.
COVID releases, bottled water and a household cast
Shooting mid-pandemic meant protocols everywhere. Everyone on set signed a COVID release, and it was bottled water only with no craft services table, which on a twelve-hour day is its own kind of endurance test. The family room set had four people sharing one couch and one bowl of popcorn, so we cast it with performers already comfortable in close contact as a household.
Every light, every performer and the camera had to land on the same word, start to finish, for two scripts in a row. Most stressful shoot we'd ever planned, and the most fun.
Several review rounds to choose the one take
When the whole film is one shot, you can't fix a moment by cutting to a different take. The winner needs the best performance, the cleanest camera move and the best audio, all in the same pass. So choosing the keeper for each film took several rounds of review, with final sign-off from Linamar's senior leadership. Rounds like these are baked into our video production process from the first cut, so nobody's surprised when they show up.
The teasers came with notes of their own. Linamar's brand rules keep the diamond logo paired with its wordmark, so we rebuilt the teaser end cards using the main film's logo animation. Skyjack and MacDon also each got their own hashtag, #PoweringAccess and #PoweringHarvest.
Launch week
Linamar’s most-watched video
It worked. A New Look became Linamar's most-watched video, organically outperforming their other uploads by 500% to 3,000%. It also picked up two Platinum Viddy Awards, in the Non-Broadcast Short Form Web Video (under 3 minutes) and Corporate Image categories.
The launch turned into a campaign of its own. That set-by-set coverage became six social teasers: Skyjack, MacDon, Mobility, Power, Water and Health. Linamar posted one a day, building up to the full film’s launch a week later. The brand film went on Linamar’s About page and into its social channels and investor decks, with high-res MOV files for playing on larger screens at live events.
And Linamar kept coming back. Since A New Look, we’ve made an investor and recruiting video, two more brand videos and a series of capabilities videos, and we work on Linamar’s See it, Be it, STEM it program every year. We’re still making things together.
If you're picturing a build like this for your own company, here's what B2B video production actually costs and where the budget goes.
Behind the scenes
Most of a week building it, one Saturday shooting it, and enough black drape to make an event space forget it had windows.
