John King Chains – 100 Years in Motion

The Challenge

A hundred years of history provides an extraordinary amount of material. The challenge is deciding what deserves to become part of the film.

For John King Chains, a conventional chronological company history would never have been enough. The business began in Yorkshire and has developed into an international engineering organisation, so the film needed to acknowledge its heritage while representing the modern manufacturer it is today.

It also needed to balance engineering scale with a human story. The manufacturing capability, machinery and technical precision matter, but so do the people and knowledge that have carried the business through successive generations.

There was a further production challenge: footage would be captured across the UK, USA, Chile, Poland and South Africa. Different crews, locations and environments all had to contribute to one consistent cinematic identity rather than feeling like separate shoots assembled afterwards.

The centenary created the reason to look back. The creative task was to use that history to say something meaningful about John King today and where the company is heading next.

The Approach

The project developed over approximately eight months, giving us time to understand John King’s history, people, manufacturing environment and culture before determining how the story should be presented on screen.

Rather than trying to document every decade or milestone, we built the narrative around themes that remained relevant throughout the life of the business: heritage, people, craftsmanship, precision engineering, progress and international growth.

Archive material played an important role, but we wanted to avoid relying on a conventional montage of old photographs and dates. One of the central creative devices used a projector to introduce historic John King imagery physically within the contemporary environment, allowing archive material to interact with light, texture and the present-day space.

The Leeds factory became another major part of the visual language. Machinery, steel, sparks, movement and manufacturing detail were approached cinematically rather than as simple process coverage.

A dedicated evening filming session, captured after the manufacturing environment had quietened, gave the production greater control over lighting, atmospheric haze, camera movement and composition. This allowed sequences to be developed deliberately around the visual language of the film.

Interviews and observational filmmaking then brought the people behind the engineering into the story. Their perspectives connected the company’s heritage with the organisation operating today, ensuring the film retained a human quality even when communicating industrial scale.

Every creative decision was designed to serve the same purpose: to create something appropriate for a 100-year milestone without allowing the company to feel defined by its past.

Taking the Story Global

John King Chains is headquartered in Leeds, but representing the modern business properly meant taking the production beyond Yorkshire.

Nine filming days were completed in the UK, with a further five international filming days covering the USA, Chile, Poland and South Africa.

The international element was not simply about gathering footage from different countries. Each location needed to feel as though it belonged within the same film.

We established a clear creative framework, visual references and filming direction for the overseas production, then remotely directed the international crews to maintain consistency in framing, movement, subject matter and overall tone.

The objective was consistency without making every location look identical. Each operation needed to retain its own character while still feeling unmistakably part of John King’s wider story.

The resulting footage expands the scale of the film naturally. Leeds remains an important point of origin, while the international production demonstrates what the company has grown into during its first century.

The Result

The finished film premiered as part of John King Chains’ centenary celebrations on 27 June 2026, bringing the company’s history, people and international growth together at a significant moment for the business.

The anniversary provided the initial reason for making the film, but the finished piece was designed for a much longer life. It gives John King a central brand asset capable of representing the organisation to customers, partners, employees, future recruits and other stakeholders beyond the centenary event itself.

The film preserves an important part of the company’s heritage while showing the scale and precision of the manufacturing operation that exists today.

It communicates international reach without losing sight of the people behind the engineering, and provides a clearer picture of the organisation than a conventional corporate history film could achieve.

Its value lies in having a substantial piece of brand storytelling that can continue supporting corporate communications, recruitment, sales conversations and the wider John King brand as the company enters its next century.

One hundred years created the moment to make the film. The intention was to create something that would remain valuable long after that moment had passed.