Anthropic · Brand Film · 2026
The Shape of Inference.
A short film exploring how thinking happens inside a large language model — told through the people who build them, and the strange metaphors we invent to make sense of their work.
Client
Anthropic
year
2026
Runtime
04:22
Format
Brand Film
Watch
Watch the film · 04:22
Directed by Joel Austin · DP Marta Huang · Edited by Jaunty Crab Club
Overview
Anthropic came to us with a deceptively simple request: make a film about what our researchers actually do — and why it matters.
The challenge wasn’t access or production. It was the idea itself. “Inference” is the kind of word that shuts down more conversations than it opens. If we were going to make a film about the inner life of a model, we had to start by finding a visual language that felt like the thing, without pretending to literally be it.
Over four weeks of interviews and location scouts, we shaped a structure: three researchers, three chapters, each anchored by a metaphor the person themselves had reached for when trying to explain their work out loud. Architecture. Cartography. Gardening. We let the metaphors do the visual lifting.
The challenge
Explain the inside of a black box — without pretending we can see inside.
Every technology film has to resolve the tension between what the audience expects to see (screens, datacenters, abstract graphics) and what the work actually is (mostly people, quietly, at whiteboards). Going too concrete makes the work feel smaller than it is. Going too abstract makes the film feel like a perfume ad.
We also had an uncommon constraint: the company’s tone is famously careful. Anything that overstated, oversold, or dramatized would ring false against their published voice. The film needed to be confident without being grand.
The approach
Three rooms, three metaphors, one long walk.
We shot entirely on location across the Anthropic office and two research environments in the Bay Area, over three days. No sets, no studios, no on-the-nose b-roll. Marta Huang shot on an Arri Alexa 35 with vintage Zeiss Super Speeds — warm, a little soft at the edges, the way memory looks.
The edit is structured as a single continuous thought, stitched across cuts. Voiceover comes only from the three researchers themselves; there’s no narrator. A score by Nils Frahm collaborator Anne Müller — moves quietly under everything.
“They didn’t try to make our work look cool. They tried to make it look like what it feels like from the inside — which turns out to be something closer to a long, careful walk.”
— Research Director, Anthropic
Selected stills
The outcome
A film that traveled further than any of us expected.
Published on the Anthropic YouTube channel and shared at a research event the following week. Strong watch-through, strong inbound — and a piece the company still uses in its recruiting.
2.4M
Views in first 90 days
68%
12
4:22
Made by a small group of
good people.
- Director
- Producer
Jaunty Crab Club
- Cinematographer
Marta Huang
- Editor
- Colorist
- Sound Design
- Original Score
- Production Co.
- For Anthropic
Credits
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