Cole Place House
Every so often a job comes in that's more than a job. Cole Place was one of them — a Harry Gesner house up in Trousdale Estates, and the first time I've had the chance to film one of his masterpieces. I got to live with it for a couple of days — full days, morning to deep night — and the whole time it kept showing me something new. Most of a day like that is waiting: you hold for the window you planned, take your couple of shots, then wait for the next one. This house made the waiting easy.
I've never seen a fireplace like this one. It's the centerpiece of the house — you walk in and it just sits there, grand, holding the whole room around it. Then, later, flying the drone to get a side profile of the house, it clicked: the fireplace and the side view of the house are exactly the same shape. The whole building, repeated in miniature at its own center. Gesner knew exactly what he was doing.
The interiors were the fight. A wall of windows with that much sky behind it is a brutal contrast ratio — expose for the room and the city blows out, expose for the city and the room goes black. Every setup was a negotiation between the two, and neither side ever fully won.
The other thing a Gesner does is hand you too much. Every angle works. That's the trap. Shoot everything that looks good and you come home with a pile of postcards and no film. So the real discipline was shooting only what was necessary — which is harder than it sounds when the house keeps showing off.
And it never sat still. Early morning, late afternoon, sunset, twilight, deep into the night — a different house every time. New shapes of light, the view shifting underneath it, and you could never settle on one version of the place. That's why the job ran three sessions. It grew as it went, too: a branding piece with the agent on camera and car scenes climbing the Trousdale roads, the lifestyle of it — and then a second film that was purely architectural. Two films, one house that kept changing between them.
A big one for us. The kind that reminds you why you started. First Gesner on the reel — hopefully not the last.