A Brand Story about higher expectations.
For more than 100 years, 3M has designed industrial abrasives specifically for the metalworking industry. These products are built to withstand grinding on the toughest metal, in the toughest conditions, with everything at stake.
Metalworkers have thrived in the industry for generations and perform rigorous, demanding jobs that require precise handling of tough, often dangerous metals.
The values that make the metalworker are the same values that make the brand.
We created films to capture the raw essence of the metalworker’s values. The films tell the stories of people who, through their relentless pursuit of craft, continually innovate. People that need their tools to work as hard as they do.
Taking a documentary approach, we filmed workspaces, elements and people in their natural state. To create a sense of momentum with our images, the camera always moved, creating subtle parallax shifts to help depict depth and scale in our scenes.
During filming, we relied completely on available light and shot framing to find naturally striking shot composition. We never modified placement within a scene, propped with materials, and never used additional lighting. These scenes were filmed in their natural state.
We set out to visually represent the scale of these stories in an unobtrusive and authentic way and to bring them to the screen unaltered and visceral.
