Project Series: JULABO USA

The ambition was simple: Tell a story that links temperature control in high-tech industrial environments with its impact on human lives, while recognizing the scientists in the lab for the important work they do.

“Lab techs, scientists and engineers watching these spots should think, ‘Oh, man. I feel seen.’ … They have to get it right, every day,” says Sageworx co-founder Marc Calamia.

JULABO manufactures liquid temperature-control equipment for demanding research and industrial settings. That meant approaching its four-film series as more than a demonstration of equipment. The scientist would carry the story; JULABO would help make their work possible.

In part one of a three-part interview, Patrick Conreaux and Grace Pečar-Yannotta are joined by executive producers Kathryn Jones and Marc Calamia, creative director Harris Davis, and cinematic director and genAI creator, Claudia Lalau. This first episode explores the team's perspectives on early research, the challenges of representing JULABO's technology accurately, and how they found the human story inside a highly technical product.

Grace Pečar-Yannotta: When this project first came to the team, how did you find the human story, and define the role the equipment needed to play?

Claudia Lalau: When I got the first script, I saw a big challenge – I'd never made a film for this industry. We wanted to bring in the human element without making JULABO the primary hero of the film. We have a hero for the story, and a hero behind the story. And the hero behind the story is JULABO. The “story-hero” and the “solution-finder-hero.” Connecting those two was the challenge, and what I liked most about the project.

Kathryn Jones: Marc and I interviewed some really wonderful directors, but we were looking for someone who did people really well. Claudia was talking about the human elements immediately in our very first interview. And that first script, as a reminder, is not a story, really. It was pretty generic, and we needed to make a story around it. Claudia came to the table immediately with ideas of how to bring the person to the story. I think that's the reason why we ultimately landed on Claudia.

Marc Calamia: Shout out to Sara Mcfarlane, the strategist who helped us find the emotional story in this very machine-driven world. I remember us all shifting and being excited about making the scientist the hero – the scientist who needs the machine to perform perfectly, every time, on every experiment. And it does. And Claudia brought the perfect expression for that. The person watching it should think, “Oh, man. I feel seen,” and see themselves in it.

Harris Davis: I honestly thought these were going to be highly technical product videos for their audience, which is primarily made up of engineers. But once I saw the brief and Sara's work, it was clear that highlighting the human connection to the product was the more effective play.

Grace: How did that shift toward a human story change the way you thought about JULABO's audience?

Kathryn: Our client had been making very technical videos, but we were creating something specifically B2B. The client is the scientist, the buyer, the person who's gonna spend tens of thousands of dollars on this machine. And there's competition. How do you make that person feel something? Because ultimately, emotion drives action. If we want someone to take action, you've gotta find a way inside the story, inside their heart. Understanding that person meant understanding the details of their working environment, too.

Patrick: The entire team went through JULABO University to understand how the equipment worked. Harris, I believe you mentioned that we needed that knowledge to be taken seriously, but also to avoid showing the product in an environment where it couldn't actually deliver. Marc, curious on your take, what came out of that discovery period that we couldn’t lose as we moved through production?

Marc: For me, it was once I understood the physics. There was a diagram that took the lid off one of the machines, and showed how the liquid moved through it as it was cooled or heated. That's the same functionality that works in all the machines. Then I understood more how that might live in the universe that we were about to create.

Because we didn't have images of the machine in a lab, it's all top secret, so we had to imagine it. I remember learning what a TCU was, a temperature control unit, and how some are small while others are big enough to hold a car. But there's a window that looks inside, and you can see the experiment. The heat, the cold, the combustion. I wondered whether that heat would create little molecules of sweat on the outside of the glass, for example, or if the cold would create frost that would come down the machine.

We needed to understand those details so we could tell the AI model, “Do that. Don't do that.” Remember the satellite in the field? It was a tiny, little part of a giant frame. It was this gorgeous shot, and we were fixated on how much snow would be on it if it were out in the cold and if it were being maintained, not an old satellite. We had to get very specific.

Harris: I think the research and JULABO University were more about gaining the client’s trust than about educating myself on temperature science. It helped them see that we were ready to roll up our sleeves and take this project seriously.

Patrick: Claudia, how painstaking were those first couple films, when we were trying to get everything in the right environment, and the liquid just right?

Claudia: For the first film, I only had one image showing the connectors, and we couldn't even see the TCU.

Marc: That’s right. It was a long shot, too. Wasn't it a long push or a pull?

Claudia: We had one image, and it wasn't very good quality. We had to create everything from that. It was a learning experience.

Marc: We worked hard to get it right – mostly the liquid. We made multiple adjustments: how the liquid looks, the color of the liquid, the motion.

Kathryn: There was something we did on the first film that we haven't needed to repeat.

Which is – remember, Marc? – we sent JULABO pictures of every single frame for approval: doors, cables, everything. We haven't had the need to do that since, and Marc, to your credit, you really built up trust with the client. They let us move forward from there.

Marc: Obviously, you gotta make the AI look as good as it can, but there's a synthesis that happens when all those things are put together, and you realize it's just like making a regular film. You have casting. You have locations. You have wardrobe. You have props, elements.

Putting the scientist first meant we had to get their world right. What are the right goggles? Do they wear white, yellow or blue Hazmat suits? Do they wear chemical splash guards and face shields or respirators? Are their gloves nitrile or neoprene, or cryogenic? And each lab is different. We built a library of images for Claudia to start with. Then, Claudia, you had to make those things come to life and move. That brought in a million other questions. Discovery gave us a foundation and an instinct for how this stuff should live in realistic environments.

In part two, we continue the conversation with a closer look at how the four films evolved the human in the story. The team discusses what kept them connected as a campaign and how shorter scripts gave Claudia more room to build the story between the lines.

In the meantime, check out the JULABO case study for examples of the work, and a closer look at the project.