On location for an American Airlines Cargo shoot

Catherine Balston • Oct 07, 2019

A fruit farm in rural Brazil was the setting for a video showcasing American Airlines Cargo's logistics operation in getting papayas from farm to market in the USA in just four days. A Story Productions crew provided on-the-ground support for the Brazil shoot

Learning how to plant, grow and harvest papayas was all in a day’s work for the Story Productions crew the week before last. We have clients all over the world who get in touch wanting to film a mind-boggling variety of people and places – sometimes with little more than a day or two’s notice. It keeps us on our toes and we’ve yet to get a request that we can’t handle!


This particular shoot was at a papaya farm in the interior of Espírito Santo – a small state wedged between Rio de Janeiro and Bahia. Our client was Recreation Dallas, a US advertising agency. They commissioned Texas-based Equilateral Films to shoot an infomercial showing the seamless and speedy logistics involved in getting fruit from a Brazilian farm to market in the US in just four days.

The film’s protagonists are FERMAC, Brazil’s leading cargo company, and American Airlines Cargo. The shoot was split into four stages: at Miami Airport; at the FERMAC headquarters in Campinas in the interior of São Paulo state; at the fruit farm in Espirito Santo; and the fourth at São Paulo’s international airport, capturing American Airlines Cargo loading the crates of papayas onto a US-bound plane.


Story Productions organised all the shoot logistics in Brazil and provided a fixer and production assistant for the shoots at FERMAC and at the fruit farm. At FERMAC, the Equilateral crew shot interviews with the company's CEO and commercial manager, as well as B-roll footage at the company.

For the shoot at the fruit farm, the Story crew flew with a photographer, the Equilateral Films producer and director, as well as representatives from American Airlines Cargo and Recreation Dallas to Vitória, the capital of Espírito Santo state. From there, we arranged van transport to Linhares, a small town nearly 100 miles north of Vitória, for two days filming at Doce Fruit – a 175 hectare farm that ships out tonnes of papayas for the domestic and overseas market every day.


On the first day of the shoot, the challenge for Equilateral Films was to capture on camera the whole process that the papayas go through from start to finish, from planting the seeds to harvesting, washing, storage, refrigeration, laboratory inspection, packaging, labeling and lastly shipping. The focus of the second day of the shoot was interviews and B-roll footage at the farm.

Besides arranging the on-the-ground logistics for the shoot in Brazil, Story Productions also removed the bureaucratic headaches for the shoot in Brazil, obtaining the ANCINE (Brazilian Film Agency) authorisation to film in Brazil. The finished film will be part of an American Airlines Cargo microsite and branding campaign due to launch in early 2020.

The Story crew not only learnt more than they ever thought they would about papayas, they made sure the shoot ran smoothly and had a great time with the teams from Recreation Dallas and Equilateral Films. The feeling, it seems, was mutual!


"We loved the Story team so much! They did a perfect job, and we miss them already!" Jessica, Executive Producer at Equilateral Films.


Here is a sneak peek of the final product:

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