Time Magazine Spielberg Cover Shoot
Stephen Spielberg is a busy man. His people said that we would probably only get 20 minutes with him for the photo shoot. Luckily, the photographer, Michael Grecco, is used to shooting celebrities with tight schedules. Time Magazine created a mock up cover with Spielberg’s head and shoulder image superimposed over a black and white news photo of a terrorist from the hostage situation at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
The shoot took place in one of the giant hanger-style sound stages on the Universal Studios back lot. I rolled my equipment cart through the doorway into the cavernous sound stage as they were lighting an 8′ wide duratrans of a terrorist in a ski mask looking ominously over a balcony. A paper backdrop and an outside industrial looking scene were also pre-lit and ready to shoot if time allowed.
When Mr. Spielberg arrived, the studio doors were shut and the only light on the soundstage was coming from the set. It definitely set the mood for the shoot. The photographer showed Mr. Spielberg the digital test shots on our 30″ Apple Cinema display. He seemed impressed with the whole set up. He took his place in front of the camera and the first couple of shots were captured. I turned the computer cart so that Spielberg and Grecco both had a good viewing angle. Everyone was satisfied and ready for the shoot to proceed. The camera being used was the Leaf Aptus 22 on a Hasselblad H1, tethered to a Dual 2.7 G5 computer loaded with 8 gigs of RAM and a hardware accelerated SATA RAID 3. Two drives would have to fail simultaneously for us to loose data. In addition to the RAID, everything gets written to an external “transfer” drive that travels separately (usually with the photographer). There aren’t any “re-do’s” at this level of celebrity portraiture so we have to be prepared for the worst case scenario. After Grecco felt he had what the magazine wanted, he switched to the Canon 1Ds Mark2 with the 90mm tilt/shift lens (also tethered to the computer). He wanted to play with throwing the foreground and background out of focus.
After a wardrobe change, they quickly moved to the paper backdrop for some clean head and shoulder images. Time was ticking and we were all watching the clock. We had been shooting for over an hour. Everyone gathered around the capture cart to view the images. Spielberg was very involved with editing the images and was willing to spend extra time to do so. Michael Grecco pointed out that he still wanted to get an outdoor shot if there was time. Mr. Spielberg was reluctantly called away to “put out a fire” but promised to come back and shoot the last set up. We rolled the capture cart outside and set up for the next shot using the 1Ds Mark2 system. It was getting pretty close to dusk and it wouldn’t be as good of a shot if we lost the light. True to his word, Mr. Spielberg came back about 1/2 hour later and in addition to the first outdoor setup, they walked around the backlot and found another interesting place to shoot. Because they were “running and gunning”, I pulled the firewire cable and let Grecco shoot to CF card so that they didn’t even have to wait the few minutes it would take for me to do a move.
Everybody was happy with the images and the shoot was wrapped. We ended up having over two hours actual shooting time with Mr. Spielberg. I have seen this happen time and time again, where the subject is busy and only allows a few minutes to shoot. They often change their mind once they see the images instantaneously on a large monitor and they become active participants instead of just subjects.
Credit should also go to Mr. Grecco since it would have been a lot easier to just drop in a clean head and shoulder shot over a scan of the terrorist photo, especially with possible time constraints. I feel that by producing the large duratrans set piece, he created an atmosphere that was conducive to a collaborative environment and set the mood for something special to happen.
It was our first shoot for Time Magazine and we found out that they work on very tight deadlines. This shoot took place on Wednesday evening and the hero shot was on the cover at the news stands first thing Monday morning. We provided a link to the password protected interactive web gallery for this shoot by 10 AM West Coast time the next morning (standard delivery for Image Mechanics jobs). They narrowed it down to 8 images and the photographer asked us to do a light retouch on those files. We have a “clean up” service that is only $30 per image and includes removing blemishes and stray hairs etc. We delivered the digital files to Time Magazine’s FTP server on Friday afternoon and sent a “guide print” via FedEx overnight. There is virtually no way this job could have happened if film had to be shot, proofed, scanned, retouched and printed.
Client deadlines are getting shorter and shorter. The magazine didn’t even indicate this was a rush job. They just consider it business as usual to get everything turned around quickly. Having Image Mechanics as part of the team helps create an amazing client experience, as well as provide the competitive edge necessary to do business at this level. And oh yea, Speilberg is cool.
BTW, this shoot took place in December last year but a lot of people ask for the scoop. That is why I am rehashing history with an old story. That, and the fact that we didn’t have a blog up yet.
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September 25th, 2006 at 11:05 am
[...] Mr. Scorsese was very nice and seemed to like the concept of the shoot. His people told us we only had about 20 minutes with him before he had to leave. We started on the roof with the primary shoot. Grecco is known for his dramatic lighting and today was no exception. Even shooting outside in natural light, he overpowers the sun with strobes and controls the lighting ratios just as if he were in a studio. This gives the images a dark and brooding feel which is perfect for the director of Taxi Driver. Once the shoot started and everyone could see the images come up on the 23″ monitor, time stretched out a little just like when we shot the Spielberg Cover for Time Magazine. Subjects become collaborators when they can see the immediate results of the photo shoot. [...]