Nantucket is known for its lighthouses; they are integral to the island’s story and it was always my plan to build a story around one of them. Equally, we don’t do postcard pictures and there is always a danger of falling into the trap of being bland - particularly on an island as well photographed as Nantucket.
There is a curious tradition on Nantucket of welcoming the arrival of spring with Daffy Day - a celebration of the island’s unusually large population of daffodils that burst into life in April. Thousands of people come from the mainland on this chosen Saturday, although Covid put paid to the event in 2020 and 2021.
The centre piece of the celebration is a vintage car rally and the famous cobbled main street of Nantucket turns into a sea of yellow. This prompted some ideas and I recognised the potential of borrowing a cool vehicle and building a story around it.
We had a Morgan Freeman look-a-like on the island - Ron Sanford - and the idea of a Driving Miss Daisy concept then fell into place quite quickly. We had already scouted all the lighthouses and I knew my spot, not far from the Sankaty Head Light, built in 1850 at the easternmost point of the island. The lighthouse was always going to play a contextual role, not the lead role, that honour went to Kate Bock, who made for a spring like Miss Daisy.
The shoot was over by 7.10 am in the morning. Just as well, as we were shooting on Sankaty Head Golf Club and I think the members may have found the visual overload too much for their golf that morning.
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