Saft has been producing batteries for use in satellites for over 50 years. From chemical powder to electronics, Saft’s batteries are designed for use in harsh environments – if a battery fails in orbit, then the satellite fails. The company wanted to celebrate its history of designing batteries for space application with a video and turned to Definition to help them.

The brief

The video needed to showcase Saft’s history in the space sector and to celebrate the company’s experience and expertise. The target audience included stakeholders, employees, current and prospective customers.

The brief required us to work with teams from both the US and French Saft offices, speaking with those involved in each stage of the space battery production process to develop and convey an understanding of this important work, and its implications for humanity.

Our approach

Definition handled everything from initial creative to delivery. Starting with pre-production, the first step was agreeing on a creative approach for that film. We were excited at the opportunity to utilise vintage stock footage as well as footage from NASA to include as part of the narrative.  But it was important that this was interwoven with interview soundbites from the Saft teams.

To ensure authenticity, the entire video would be voiced by Saft. With that in mind, we carried out pre-shoot interviews and developed a loose script based around Q&A responses from each staff member and subject matter expert. This gave us a rough idea of the key messages, soundbites and structure we needed to follow when it came to face-face interviews.

With the look and feel decided, a loose script and a long shot list in place for our crew to shoot, we began storyboarding alongside planning shoot logistics. We needed to travel to both sites in the US and France, set up pre-shoot interviews and conduct on-site interviews in both locations and capture other shots to be included in the film. Our crew flew to both Baltimore and Poitiers to capture all live action elements of the film.

On return to the UK we hit the ground running with the post production process, starting with narrowing down our interview content. Before plugging in any visuals, we wanted to fully sign off our soundbites and interview content, effectively using this as our voiceover guide. Finally, we painted with b-roll, product shots and stock footage.

We really wanted to utilise multiple music tracks throughout this video, nodding to different message chapters and helping to keep the video feeling dynamic.

The result

 

“The film crew, director, and production staff involved were professional, organised, and engaged with the project. I was very pleased with the process and the final result.  This video remains my favorite of all the video projects I’ve worked on at Saft.  The process was really fun and engaging, and the final product resulted in one of the best videos we’ve produced.”