E3 Lithium facility commissioning

The Brief

Document a first-of-its-kind facility as it came online

E3 Lithium is building toward battery-grade lithium carbonate from Alberta brine using Direct Lithium Extraction. Its demonstration facility near Olds began commissioning in late 2025, and commercial production on the Clearwater Project is planned for 2028. Jeremy Nichol, Business Analyst at E3, brought us in as the facility came online. E3 needed a permanent record of the facility starting up and a library to carry its communications until production.

E3 also wanted its origin story on the record, which meant filming the build while the work was still happening. The footage goes to investors, partners and stakeholders who know the sector. The imagery had to show competence without overselling it. That ruled out a stock look and heavy branding.

On Site

6 visits, from bare ground to a facility drawing brine

We spread 6 site visits across the build instead of booking a shoot week. A facility does not start running in a day, so the record of it cannot be made in one. Visits ran 20 and 21 April, 25 April, 1 May, 30 May and 5 June, close together while the site changed fastest. The coverage followed the build as crews poured foundations, drilled wells and lifted tanks and equipment into place.

The first visit came on 20 April 2026, the day after brief sign-off. We flew a top-down of the pad at 11:38 on 28 mm, with the laydown yard, trailers and crew trucks on bare spring ground. We set the waypoint flight that day, so every later flight hit the same marks and the site could be compared frame to frame.

The site required orientation, a gas monitor at all times and an escort for every hour on the lease. Rain and wind cost time across the project, and wind decides whether a drone flies. Spreading the job over 6 visits absorbed those losses, but sunrise does not reschedule. We were airborne for the dawn flight at 06:06 on 3 May, ahead of the 06:30 call in the brief.

By 5 June we were shooting from the ground. We framed a 24 mm wide along the wellhead manifold at 10:32 and a 74 mm shot of the dome and wellheads at 11:49, with crew in gas-monitoring gear at the edge. The fields had turned green between visits. That change is why we went back 6 times.

Deliverables

82 seconds that carry the whole build

The 1:22 film covers the full arc. It opens underground on the largest lithium resource in Canada and a new way to bring it to the surface. It then tracks the site week by week as foundations, wells, tanks and equipment go in. The middle belongs to the Alberta engineers, operators and tradespeople who brought decades of energy experience to a kind of facility never built here before.

The film ends with the facility drawing lithium-rich brine from deep underground and proving it can become battery-grade product. An empty field is now the proving ground for the commercial-scale Clearwater Project, and the film closes on the line "Built here, proven here." E3 also received colour-graded b-roll clips and a library of retouched stills. They are cut to carry E3's communications until production starts in 2028.