Concept

Written by Cody Hilliard

At Coco Cineworks, and especially inside The Coco Collection, my north star is always the same: make it feel. With The Luthier, it became immediately clear that I didn’t just want to film a craft, I wanted to bring sound into the visual experience, like the image itself could vibrate. This wasn’t going to be a piece about facts and figures. It was going to be about devotion, obsession, and the kind of care you can’t measure, only recognize.

The first time I walked into Seman Violins in Skokie, Illinois, the place hit me with this Elvish-like energy, not flashy, just undeniable. Everything looked loved. Worn in the best way. Like every mark and scuff had a story and was proud of it. You could feel the history in the room. And that’s what I wanted to capture. Not how many violins were made, but the time that goes into one violin. The patience. The precision. The passion. The poetry of it. Because honestly, a well-spoken truth can land harder than any statistic ever will.

The problem I kept wrestling with was simple and brutal: how do you show perfect sound? How do you film something that’s supposed to transport you? I circled ideas for a while, scribbling scripts that would never survive, sketching storyboards between commercial shoots, on flights, anywhere I could steal a moment. Then the shape of it snapped into focus. I wanted it to be three minutes and seven seconds, a small personal anchor from one of my old addresses, a reminder of that first spark of being out on my own. The same spirit that built Coco Cineworks. And the concept became clear: don’t explain the craft, ignite it. Make the sensation explosive. Make the feeling unavoidable.