Audemars Piguet in the director’s chair

Corporate films tend to stand out for all the wrong reasons: naff music, predictable texts and an altogether off-putting complacency. As though the camera somehow justified these exercises in self-congratulatory back-patting. Thankfully, some watchmakers are taking a different tack. For his company’s twentieth anniversary, Christophe Claret invited visitors at Baselworld to don 3D glasses to watch his new corporate film, like a visit to his Manufacture, Le Soleil d’Or in Le Locle, on a crisp winter’s afternoon.

A world of fiction

The prize for originality, however, goes to Audemars Piguet. Its new corporate film draws us into a real story with its heroes and action. Says Sylvie Morselli, communication assistant at Audemars Piguet and project manager for the film: “We set out with the intention of making something very different to what’s usually on offer. We wanted there to be a strong fictional element within a very evocative context, not the umpteenth film of watchmakers at their bench. We wanted to get off the beaten track and show the Manufacture’s expertise in a different way. It soon became clear that this kind of approach would also imply a substantial budget.”

And for good reason. The five-minute film was a year in the making, in a long process that went from choosing a production company – in this case Pointprod in Geneva – to drafting the scenario, shooting in the studios and on location, and of course the 3D animation of a grande complication movement being assembled that transports the viewer from the 19th century to today. “We chose 1875, the year Audemars Piguet was established, as our starting point.” Sylvie Morselli continues. “We then had to imagine an interesting way to bring the story up to the present day, from Jules Audemars and Edward Piguet in their workshop, played by two actors and filmed in the studio with tools, parts and calibres from our museum, to the new Manufacture in Le Sentier, for which the interior shots were also filmed in the studios. The animation that bridges the two is an example of complex computer modelling. It also had to be validated as being representative of the watchmaker’s work.”

Hooves in the snow

The opening scene shows a young man on horseback, galloping through the snow to La Vallée de Joux where he hands over a parcel to the Manufacture’s two founders. It contains the metal blanks they will transform into plates for their future complication watches. This scene was in fact shot last, as Sylvie Morselli explains: “We were in the final stages, and luckily for us the last snows of March and April 2008 were still thick on the ground. Once again we came up against difficulties, especially with the horses, despite the fact they are used to winter conditions. In the end, I think we can say we have achieved our goal of creating a cinema-quality, and admittedly rather grand, film.”

This is the first time Audemars Piguet has embarked on such an enterprise. Thankfully, the decision was taken before the present slowdown set in. At a cost of around CHF 100,000 per minute of film, a project of this ilk would never see the light of day today. But this isn’t the case, and Audemars Piguet has now left its trace in the eternal snows of La Vallée de Joux!