I was awarded the honorable assignment by my fantastic client of many years, Meyer Sound, to photograph Francis Ford Coppola. Meyer Sound is an industry leader in state-of-the-art commercial sound systems.  Their products are considered to be the best in the business and they recently launched a new product line for cinematic applications.  Francis Ford Coppola and Meyer have had a long-standing, mutualistic relationship in cutting-edge technology of cinema presentation.  Mr. Coppola has taken a liking to their latest cinema products.  The new products have been installed in the American Zoetrope post-production facility at Mr. Coppola’s private winery estate in Napa, California.  Mr. Coppola is endorsing the product and that is where I come in.  Meyer Sound needs location portraiture of Mr. Coppola for their advertising and they have asked us to help them get the photos they need.

We begin working with Meyer Sound and Mr. Coppola’s production staff to begin the planning of the shoot.  The first step is a meeting with Meyer Sound and their ad agency at the Meyer Sound headquarters in Berkeley, California.  We look at existing photos of Mr. Coppola and make a creative decision on the direction of this photography.  They need genuine and sincere portraiture of Mr. Coppola.  We decide that the best location to do this is at his actual estate in Napa and the location of the sound system installation.  The two main reasons behind this are: his estate is where he genuinely does his daily work, and, it is a beautiful setting for photography.  Both the vineyard and his post-production facility are great places to shoot.

The next step is scouting the location.  I meet with Meyer Sound and the Zoetrope folks at the estate for a scouting tour.  We see the whole facility and record compass readings for sunlight angles as we move through all the photogenic locations.  We present the location options to Meyer and their creative soon afterwards and decide on two locations; the vineyard, and the post-production facility.  These are both great locations, but, both will require extensive set-up, and we only have one hour to photograph Mr. Coppola.  Everything must be set up well in advance and, be absolutely ready for shooting the moment the famous subject arrives.  I decide to bring in my favorite lighting technician, Jeremy Launais, an excellent motion picture gaffer based out of Los Angeles.

With the knowledge that the work would start early in the morning, the Zoetrope folks graciously invited me to stay on the on the property the night before the shoot.  Jeremy jumped on a flight from L.A. and we drove up there the day before to begin pre-production and initial lighting set-up.  After some successful lighting tests, Jeremy and I had a great dinner at the Rutherford Grill, and retired early.

After a great night sleep in the guest house we woke up around 5am to get ready.  Soon afterwards the camera tech, and key grip, Larkin Donley, and William Preston, arrive.  It is still dark outside.  As soon as there is a little light outside, we move out to the vineyard location to set up the 12×12 frames, lighting, generators, and cameras.  It is a beautiful morning.

Photograph by Susanna Corcoran – http://www.circa1973.com/

Photograph by Susanna Corcoran – http://www.circa1973.com/

Photograph by Susanna Corcoran – http://www.circa1973.com/

After setup and tests we are ready to go with some time to spare, so, we have some coffee and bagels with the wonderful folks from Meyer Sound.  Mr. Coppola shows up right on time and right away our makeup artist, Hether Beckrest, from Workgroup LTD, begins her magic.  Soon afterwards, Mr. Coppola arrived on set.  I would have loved to chit-chat with the master of cinema, but, there is not enough time for that.  I had already photographed Thomas Mars, father of his Grandson with his daughter Sofia, for Apple Computer’s iTunes.  There was not enough time to bring it up and start a conversation because the job at hand was number one in importance, and, had a limited amount of time.  We begin shooting right away after brief friendly greetings.  Mr. Coppola is obviously very professional and easy to work with.

Photograph by Susanna Corcoran – http://www.circa1973.com/

Photograph by Susanna Corcoran – http://www.circa1973.com/

Photograph by Susanna Corcoran – http://www.circa1973.com/

After shooting in the vineyard we had 30 minutes to move to the next location in all wheel drive vehicles and, ready the cameras in the next location, the Zoetrope Library.  The lighting had already been setup in the library so we only needed to get the cameras and laptop connected to begin shooting.  Everything went smoothly from here on and we finished right on time.  Thank you to Meyer Sound, Mr. Coppola, the American Zoetrope staff, and my crew for making this a great success.

A few weeks after the shoot the people at Zoetrope contacted me to inquire about using one of the photos as well because Mr. Coppola was fond of it.  It was an honor and we struck a usage deal.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 10:37 pm and is filed under Main Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.