U.S. Chamber of Commerce: For The Pursuit

Client

U.S. Chamber of CommerceWashington, DC

Film

For The PursuitBrand film and Great Hall cold open

Runtime

2:32Plus a version that wraps the Great Hall

Shot

9 and 10 December 20241615 H Street NW, Washington, DC

Cameras

RED and 16mmWith FPV and drones inside the building

Premiere

16 January 2025State of American Business

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote to us through our website at the end of October. Eleven weeks later, our film opened the State of American Business.

A hundred and twelve years of history.
Two days inside the building.
One film for every event in the Great Hall.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has spoken for American business since 1912, from a Cass Gilbert building on Lafayette Square, across the park from the White House. It wanted a cinematic brand film to open the events it hosts in its Great Hall: two and a half minutes that could show a first-time guest the whole of what the Chamber does, ready for the State of American Business in January. RIOT wrote it, shot it, restored its archive, cut it and built it into the room.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce•Brand film•2:32•2025

A single voice, since 1912

“At the turn of the 20th century, America was a land of limitless possibility.” The film opens there, in the street, with trolleys, crowds, typists and steelworkers, and arrives at 1912, when business leaders from across the country came together “to create a single voice dedicated to defending free enterprise.” We kept that history human: storefronts and neighborhoods, people at work, rather than smokestacks and fortunes.

The early film came from the Library of Congress, the Prelinger Archives and the National Archives, and most of it survives as small, soft scans. We denoised it, steadied it and rebuilt it at 4K, so a 1911 street could hold its own beside footage we shot that week, on screens the size of the Great Hall’s.

As found

President William Howard Taft in the Prelinger Archives scan, 480 pixels wide and public domain.

Restored

The same frame, denoised, steadied and rebuilt at 4K for the film.

As foundRestored

Two days at 1615 H Street

On 9 and 10 December 2024 we had the run of the building. Every hotel near the White House was sold out, so the crew shared a seven-bedroom house across the Potomac and walked in each morning with RED cameras, a 16mm camera, two drones and a stills photographer. The Chamber’s security team cleared us to fly inside the building, though not outside it: from the roof, you look straight across at the White House.

The best find was in the basement. The framed blueprints upstairs are replicas; the originals, four feet across, lie on a drafting table under the pipes, stamped “Cass Gilbert, Architect.” The ceiling was too low to shoot them from above, so the director of photography, James Regan, went in low and close on 16mm as the drawings were unrolled one sheet at a time. The same roll caught the Chamber’s founding letters and its leather-bound records.

Upstairs, the drones took the ceilings. Richard Shelton flew FPV up the building’s marble stairs, through its halls and the length of the Great Hall, under the chandeliers to the Chamber’s mark on the end wall, and a smaller drone drifted through the coffered ceilings and the lobby.

The mark itself, the spiral relief on the Great Hall’s end wall, we lit like a sculpture: one hard light raking across it, so every blade throws a shadow.

Steadfast, unwavering, uncompromising

The middle of the film is about what the Chamber does now, and the range is the point: local startups and global enterprises, a federation of partners at home and abroad. The script names the fight plainly: “in the courts, in state capitals, in Washington, and on the world stage.”

The numbers carry the rest, set in the Chamber’s own graphic language: the spiral mark, navy fields and a sweep of red. Fourteen Centers of Excellence. Fifteen hundred state and local chambers. A hundred and thirty American Chambers of Commerce abroad. Thirty bilateral business councils. Five hundred industry associations. When the figures changed in March 2025, we updated them in every version of the film.

A voice, not an announcer

We sent the Chamber nine voice actors and they chose Dude Walker. The direction was inspiring, resolute and forward-looking, natural and confident rather than an anchor’s read. He recorded on 23 December, two days before Christmas, and the first cut went over on New Year’s Eve.

Into the Great Hall

The Great Hall is the Chamber’s grandest room: a coffered ceiling, chandeliers, and arched windows down both walls. Screens fill the arches and the pillars between them, with a main screen over the stage, and the film had to play across all of it. So we built a second version, one canvas 17,888 pixels wide that wraps the room. The film plays on the main screen, its images echo through the arches, “For The Pursuit.” runs up every pillar, and a resting state holds the room between events.

The 16:9 film opened the State of American Business on 16 January 2025, held that year in North Texas. The same week, the room version went into the Great Hall in Washington, and in the spring it was updated with the year’s new numbers.

For the pursuit

The film ends where the Chamber wants every guest to begin, with an invitation. A mosaic of members fills the screen, and the line that gives the film its name lands on navy, with an address to join.

ServicesBrand Strategy·Creative Direction·Brand Storytelling·Scripting·Film Production·Voiceover Recording·Editing·Color Grading·Motion Graphics·VFX·Sound Design