Last week, Product Manager Tom Larsen and myself had the opportunity to travel to China to visit Palladium’s Shanghai manufacturing facility and our independent battery systems testing and certification lab—IQ Laboratories (IQL). Our main purpose for flying over: to capture our world class facility, quality control measures, processes and people via still shots and video.
After an uneventful 17 hour flight from the U.S. to Shanghai, a little rest and a safe drive into the office, we got to work right away (btw – Shanghai’s traffic is way worse than anywhere in the U.S.: 26 million people + 14,000 cars coming on the road per WEEK + nobody obeying driving rules = a terrifying ride!).
Still-shot photographer with Rebecca and Tom shooting the battery pack silk screen printing process
First up: a two-day photo shoot. We captured everything our Shanghai facility had to offer. Expansive exterior views, our customer lounge, our brilliant engineers and R&D team hard at work, program management and all of the critical steps in our custom lithium-based battery pack manufacturing process including the quality controls. For those of you who have not been on a photo or video shoot, it’s not as glamorous as everyone thinks. A lot of thought and attention to detail goes into getting the perfect shot. Your feet and back kill at the end of the day!
Palladium’s Jason Jiang “Mr. Hollywood” with videographer
Second up: a one-day video shoot. We captured most of the same things we did in the still-shots, but of course captured action—including all the battery testing IQL performs on a daily basis for customers to ensure they end up with the safest and most reliable battery pack. Tests captured via video include the Drop Test, Hot Plate Test and X-ray.
At the end of the trip we had one very tired translator (our very own Jason Jiang, whose real job is to focus on Palladium’s customers and new business, but he translated all art direction to the photographer/videographer for us!), and ended up with more than 80 still-shots and 1 hour of video footage. Stay tuned as we create communication pieces so that everyone can get a first-hand look at our unique and controlled processes and facility in Shanghai—without having to travel 17 hours!
–Rebecca Kritzman, Director of Marketing
