CASE STUDY
 

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For Zühlke, an international engineering and innovation consultancy, I developed and produced a three-part employer branding film series designed to attract highly skilled engineers and consultants across European markets. The films were shot on location in Porto, London, and Belgrade, reflecting the reach of the company's teams across Europe.

The objective was clear: communicate depth, credibility and genuine work-life balance without relying on conventional recruitment language. The films needed to resonate with experienced professionals who value substance over slogans — people deciding not just where to work, but how they want to live.

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Concept and Narrative

I structured the series around a simple, human idea: that the people who do rigorous technical work also have rich lives outside it, and that the freedom to pursue those lives is what keeps them. Rather than scripted corporate messaging, each film centres on a different Zühlke professional talking about a personal passion — and how the company's flexibility makes room for it.

In Porto, a lead software architect describes balancing a demanding role with music, gardening and home life. In London, a lead QA engineer speaks about sustaining a decade-long mindfulness practice within the working day. In Belgrade, an embedded software engineer connects the patience of sourdough baking to the way good engineering teams are trusted to work. Each protagonist is a thinking professional rather than a brand ambassador, and each story quietly makes the same point: flexibility is not a perk here, it is how the company works.

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Visual Language

I approached the series with a restrained, cinematic aesthetic. I lit each interview with controlled, naturalistic setups that emphasised presence and clarity, and kept framing deliberate and composed to create visual authority without theatricality.

Camera movement was minimal, and the pacing respected silence and nuance, letting each person's story unfold with weight. I integrated each speaker's own environment — workspace, home, the places their passions live — to ground the films in real life without turning them into visual tours.

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Production

I conceived the three films as a coherent system rather than isolated pieces, so that a viewer moving from one to the next would recognise a single series with a consistent voice. In pre-production I worked closely with Zühlke's internal team to identify professionals in Porto, London and Belgrade whose stories represented different dimensions of the company's culture, and refined each interview structure to draw out specific, personal detail rather than generic praise. On location across the three cities, the priority was a calm, concentrated atmosphere in which each participant could speak naturally and precisely.

In post I edited for clarity, rhythm and cohesion across the series, kept the cutting measured, and graded to align with Zühlke's brand palette while holding a natural tonal range. I shot, edited, colour graded and finished the series in-house.

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Deliverables

Three standalone employer branding films, platform-specific cut-down versions, and assets adapted for the company's website, recruitment campaigns, and social media.

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Impact

The series strengthened Zühlke's positioning as an employer that takes both technical excellence and the lives of its people seriously. It gave the company's recruitment teams cinematic yet credible content capable of engaging experienced professionals — the kind of candidates who respond to honesty rather than hard sell. By combining a documentary sensibility with strategic employer-branding communication, I turned Zühlke's internal culture into a coherent visual narrative about competence, trust and the freedom to build a life alongside a career.

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For more of my corporate and branded film work, see my other case studies.