Williams F1 Documentary

Like many other major employers, Williams F1 were massively affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Earlier this year, the plug was pulled on the Australian Grand Prix whilst the Williams team were starting their practice laps on track. Suddenly leaving them with over a thousand employees, plus drivers and a substantial mobile support team to manage remotely.

Williams leaned heavily on their partnership with Cyber Giant Symantec, to support them during the crisis with remote working, networking of teams and security of their hugely valuable IP.

To tell this fascinating story they decided to do something different by commissioning etm productions to produce a documentary that could be used at forthcoming virtual events, and for broadcast on their YouTube and social media channels.

etm’s starting point was a series of calls to understand the in’s and outs, twists and turns of this complex narrative. The next big milestone was the writing of the script with parts created for all the main speakers from both Williams F1 and Symantec. Directing and filming was an interesting activity - on location at Williams HQ, with the film crew in full PPE, obeying all Covid-19, social distancing and security protocols. And yes, it was hard not to see the funny side of things, with plenty of photo opportunities of all the ridiculous and amusing circumstances we found ourselves in. A first in so many ways!!

Back to the studio with a huge amount of raw material to edit, along with B-roll footage, media library shots and audio tracks to lay down.

The result – one a-maz-ing video that we are incredibly proud of, and that the Williams F1 management team described as one of the best videos of its kind they had ever seen.

Praise indeed!!