Intel General Counsel Content Shoot in Silicon Valley

When Persuit needed to profile April Boise, Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary of Intel Corporation, for their quarterly magazine The Fold, the window was 90 minutes on campus in Silicon Valley and the crew were flying in from two different cities. This is what a cross-timezone, high-efficiency production looks like when the pre-production is done properly.

The brief called for two deliverables from a single session: editorial photography for the magazine spread and a video interview for digital channels. April Boise is Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary of Intel Corporation, one of the world's most recognisable technology companies. Her time is finite and her diary is managed carefully. We had 90 minutes. The output needed to cover both photography and motion, portrait and interview, print and digital. There was no room for a slow set-up or a poorly briefed crew.

Intel's Silicon Valley campus. Strong architecture, clean lines, and a location with genuine character. The exterior living wall became the key portrait backdrop from the moment we saw it in the remote location scout.

The brief

Persuit operates a quarterly publication called The Fold, aimed at senior legal professionals across the industry. For this edition, they needed a profile of April Boise that could carry both the print spread and a video companion piece for their digital channels. That meant stills and motion from the same session, with a subject who had a fixed and non-negotiable 90-minute availability window.

For that combination to work, you need a crew with specific competencies, a shot list planned around the available time, and a location brief that has been thought through before anyone travels. You cannot improvise your way through a dual-output shoot with a senior executive on a tight schedule. The planning is what makes the execution possible.

Three time zones, one call sheet

All pre-production was managed from London by Ciara and me. Persuit's team operates across London and Melbourne. April and the Intel communications team are on West Coast time. Our Director of Photography, Cal Etcheverry, is LA-based. Getting everyone briefed, aligned and confirmed across that spread requires a level of discipline that most agencies underestimate until it goes wrong.

Every timezone is a gap where miscommunication can take hold. A question that arrives in London at 5pm doesn't get answered until the following morning. A location request coming from the West Coast lands in London at 1am. The only way to run a production like this cleanly is to close every variable before the shoot day: locations scouted remotely, shot list locked, run of play confirmed, every contributor briefed so that the day itself is execution, not problem-solving.

That is the work Ciara and I do before the crew boards a flight. It is not visible in the final photographs, but it is what makes the final photographs possible. An international production that goes smoothly is not lucky. It is planned.

Portraits and b-roll

With the interview complete, the crew moved outside for the portrait and b-roll phase. The living wall on the building exterior had been identified in the remote location scout as the lead portrait setting: strong natural green tones, good depth, a backdrop with genuine texture that would hold up in print without competing with the subject.

For a senior executive being photographed for a professional publication, the brief for corporate portrait photography at this level has to balance authority with presence. The images needed to read as credible and assured to the GC readership of The Fold, while still feeling warm and human. A real person rather than a corporate symbol. The living wall gave us a softer, more organic backdrop than the glass-and-steel architecture on site, and it reads exactly as intended.

Cal captured b-roll of the campus and the session environment to support the video edit while the portrait work was underway. Again, two outputs running in parallel from the same time window.

April Boise, EVP, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Intel Corporation. Shot on location at the Intel campus, Silicon Valley.

What makes a shoot like this work

The answer is not the crew, though the crew matters. It is not the equipment. It is not even the location, though having a great location helps. What makes a 90-minute cross-timezone production work is the decisions that get made in the weeks before the shoot day.

• The location is chosen for a reason, not arrived at on the day
• The shot list is built around outputs, not around what feels good to capture
• The interview structure is signed off before anyone travels
• Every contributor (client, subject, crew, communications team) knows exactly what is happening and when
• The crew is small enough to move fast and experienced enough not to need handholding

Ciara managed the client and subject communications throughout. I handled the production brief and crew coordination. That division of responsibility is part of how MHF Creative runs international shoots: each part of the production has a clear owner, and nothing falls into a gap between timezones.

The result

Persuit had the corporate portrait photography and the video interview they needed for The Fold. April's profile ran with a set of editorial images that positioned her as the senior, credible figure she is, with the warmth and character that makes a magazine profile worth reading rather than just scanning.

From our side, the shoot wrapped on time, on brief, and with no surprises. Which, on a production like this, is exactly how it should feel. The best international shoots are not the ones that make great stories afterwards. They are the ones that simply go well. That applies whether the brief is corporate portrait photography, video interview production, or both at once.