Client: Beyond – Genre: Brand Film – Location: East London – Delivered: June 2026
Beyond
A brand launch film for a global Google Cloud engineering company: five businesses become one, nine countries, one new name, delivered start to finish in three weeks.
Beyond is what five companies became: CTS, the pioneering Google Cloud partner founded in Manchester, merged with Appsbroker in 2023 to form Qodea, at that point Europe’s largest dedicated Google Cloud consultancy. TIQQE brought Swedish engineering depth and opened the Nordic market. Tmc3 brought public-sector-grade cybersecurity. Beyond LLC brought design, UX and digital product, and a first real foothold in North America. Then a rebrand, to Beyond, because Qodea (their previous name) no longer described what the business had become: the leading Google partner in EMEA, with more than 75% of its team working as hands-on technical specialists.
Which left a problem. Genuine technical credibility across nine countries, and almost no brand recognition to match it. The new name had soft-launched six weeks earlier, and even long-standing Google partners didn’t know it. Beyond needed the film that would introduce the company to its own market, and needed it in a month.
01. The brief
One film to
lead the launch
The ask was one film to lead a formal brand launch: acknowledge the heritage without dwelling on it, establish Beyond as the unified, forward-looking brand, cover the capabilities, Google Cloud infrastructure, Workspace, security, agentic AI, feel like real people rather than a generic tech video, and be built to be cut down for social, presentations and campaign use.
The brief came with its own test for success: put the finished film in front of someone who had known the business as any of its previous companies, and have it end the confusion about who Beyond is, what it does, and why it provides the best solutions in the market. Pass that, and the film has done its job.
The constraints were fixed before we were in the room. Launch week commencing 22 June, couldn’t move. Global campaigns from September, so the brand had to be established first. Footage in the can by the first week of June. Executive availability limited to a single morning. The enquiry arrived through the site on 20 May; we held the discovery workshop the same day, and costed approach options went back the next morning.
02 — What we did
A story of five companies,
a one day shoot.
Beyond sells expertise and partnership, not a product off a shelf — so the film had to be carried by real people, not a scripted voiceover. We built it from directed interviews with four members of the executive team, shot in a single day in a hired East London studio, scheduled in staggered one-hour slots so each executive gave up an hour rather than a day. The last interview wrapped by early afternoon. Everything else happened in the edit.
A) Interviews as the spine
Four C-suite contributors: CEO Alan Paton on the history and the future, Chief Delivery Officer Divya Sampath on speed and scale, CISO Dan Baker on security, Chief Innovation Officer Margaux Tremac on AI. No narrator. The CEO also recorded a talk-to-camera piece for recruitment at the end of his slot — one extra idea that became a whole extra asset.
B) A motion language from their brand, not imposed on it
Four C-suite contributors: CEO Alan Paton on the history and the future, Chief Delivery Officer Divya Sampath on speed and scale, CISO Dan Baker on security, Chief Innovation Officer Margaux Tremac on AI. No narrator. The CEO also recorded a talk-to-camera piece for recruitment at the end of his slot — one extra idea that became a whole extra asset.
C) Five businesses, one animation
The film’s centrepiece maps the acquired companies into one brand. The first version used generic icons; the client rightly felt they undersold the business, sourced the real logos, and we rebuilt the sequence around them. The stronger idea won, whoever had it.
D) Narrative first, polish second
On a compressed timeline, the risk is spending finishing time on the wrong structure. So version one was deliberately an assembly cut — story, structure and messaging only, flagged as such in advance. The narrative was signed off at version two. The client described it as spot on. Only then did the animation, grade and mix go in.
03 — The timeline
Thirty-four days,
start to finish
Thirty-four days from first conversation to contracted delivery sounds like a corner cut somewhere. It wasn’t — it was a month with a shape. The first week is thinking: the workshop, costed options the next morning, creative development, so that by the time the agreement is signed there’s already an approved outline and a booked location. The shoot is one day, built around the executives’ diaries rather than ours — four interviews in staggered hour slots, wrapped by early afternoon.
The rest is the edit, run to a rhythm: a new version roughly every two working days, notes by midday, amends the same afternoon. Because the story was locked before the polish went on, the pace cost the film nothing — the narrative never moved after version two, and everything that followed was finishing.
The recruitment cut went out first, within days of the shoot, because the hiring push couldn’t wait for the hero film. The hero film arrived on the contracted date, in
34 days
First conversation to final delivery
1 shoot
Four C-suite interviews, wrapped by early afternoon
7 assets
Finished films from that single day
04 — The result
Seven finished films — and a podcast series.
The contracted deliverable was one brand film. What Beyond actually launched with, all from that single shoot day: the hero film, delivered through four numbered versions plus a compile, on the contracted date, into a launch week that could not move. Three social cuts, each in 16:9 and 9:16 — Who Is Beyond?, the identity cut, which cleared client review with no notes; Recruitment, built around the CEO’s talk-to-camera and turned around as a rough standalone within days of the shoot because the hiring push couldn’t wait; and The Future, where the business is going and the ambition behind it.
Then the work kept going. After delivery, Beyond asked whether the film’s animated logo opening could carry their four-part podcast series, Beyond the Pilot — Agentic AI in Production — so we extended the sequence into a full title system for the series. And the motion graphics language was handed over built for reuse, so Beyond’s September campaign work starts from an established system rather than a blank file.
WHY WE MAKE FILMS LIKE THIS
Find the documentary angle. Then build.
Every brand brief has a documentary angle in it somewhere, a true story doing the work a script would otherwise have to fake. Beyond’s was the origin: five real companies, nine countries, one name the market hadn’t learned yet. Our job was to find that angle and build the brand film around it.
So the film runs on documentary method where it counts: real contributors, unscripted, drawn out in interview, no narrator, no autocue, a CEO who reads as a person rather than a press release. And it runs on brand method where that counts: a motion language built from Beyond’s own system, an animated structure sequence, a grade and mix made for launch screens. Documentary is what makes you believe the people; the brand and animation work is what carries them across social, presentations and campaigns — the bridge between the people who actually do the work and the digital surfaces where a company meets its market. Done properly the two disciplines aren’t in tension. They’re the same film. Around here we fondly call it a documercial.
The benchmark we pitched against was our own, the Purpose of Wealth film for AlTi Tiedemann Global — and this was the second film the commissioner had brought to us, which is the measure we care about most. If you’re launching a brand, or relaunching one that’s outgrown its name, and you suspect there’s a true story underneath the messaging: that’s the conversation we’re best at.
Commissioned by
Delivered
June 2026 · Contracted date met · Launch week commencing 22 June
Producer Director
Isabella Bazoni
Production Agency
Here Now Films – In-house
Location
East London · Single shoot day · 8 June 2026
Creative Devlopment
Ollie Couch
Animation
Tyler Jack-Cross
Edit
Tom Rodwell
Contributors
Alan Paton (CEO) · Divya Sampath (Chief Delivery Officer) · Dan Baker (CISO) · Margaux Tremac (Chief Innovation Officer)