Meet Cooper Andrews | Owner of Z41 Film Lab & Filmmaker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Cooper Andrews and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Cooper, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Starting Z41 Film Lab felt like a very natural progression to my life. I started developing film because I wanted to cut costs on the high price of taking my film to labs, which then evolved into developing my friend’s film for a lot cheaper, which evolved into developing film for people at my school for a lot cheaper, which then eventually involved to a much wider audience via social media. The goal was and will always be to make developing film more accessible for everyone.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I think something that’s very unique about Z41 is that when you get your film developed with us, you are directly supporting whoever you chose to develop your film with within our business. This can create a more personal experience at Z41 with your developer and can foster better conversations or questions. I think it’s also very helpful that our developers set their own limits for each week. While we offer a 3-5 business day turnaround, the developer chooses how many order they can take per week so they can create their own schedules and workloads that work for themselves.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Wonderful! This is a great question. For food we would definitely go to Sake2Me in Tustin, Cancun Juice in Orange, Taco Stand, and DonerG in Santa Ana. I also really enjoy trying new places, so we’d probably go somewhere we’ve never been before. Supporting street vendors is really important and the food is always phenomenal! I really like Weir Canyon, there’s a secret beach near Laguna, The Frida Cinema, and the Angeles National Forest, among other places. There genuinely is a lot to do down here, and I enjoy being outside and gardening at local community gardens!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I feel like there’s a hundred people I could shoutout right now! I definitely want to give a big shoutout to my Co-Owner, Bella, who started this company with me from the ground up. She’s worked so incredibly hard with me to bring this business to where it is now! The craziest part is that we’ve never actually met in person because she lives across the country, but countless facetime calls is how we were able to grow and work together with our business. I also want to shoutout the Z41 Developer Team! Our crew of people who develop film with us and work so incredibly hard every single day. It’s so inspiring to see these people be apart of our company and bring so much to the table.

Website: www.z41film.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/z41filmlab/

Image Credits
Nuria Schettino Gonzalez, David Murillo Galiano, Dylan West