Wednesday’s Challenge: ‘A Day in Hollywood’ : Photography: Unlike other ‘Day in the Life’ books, numerous power centers and schedules hinder focusing on entertainment industry.

Up until now, Collins Publishers San Francisco, the successful firm behind the best-selling “Day in the Life” series of oversized, glossy photo-essay books, has had it relatively easy. They’ve only had to cover places like Japan, Canada, Ireland and the United States. Even the company’s toughest assignments--the logistics of a day in the life of the Soviet Union during the first rumblings of glasnost or, several years later, China just prior to the Tian An Men Square student uprising--seem like a walk in the park: The 12th book in the series is “A Day in the Life of Hollywood.”

“Setting this up has been like dealing with the Soviet Union and Washington put together,” says Deborah Goldblatt, the book’s project editor, of the logistics involved. “We have at least six White Houses in this town.”

Wednesday, at 12:01 a.m., 75 photographers from around the world will descend on Hollywood for 24 hours, with the intention of shooting every aspect of the entertainment industry, a business that admittedly is not always open to photojournalistic scrutiny.

Goldblatt, who, for the last 14 years has been publishing the directory of Hollywood production resources, “LA 411,” supervises a group of six assignment editors who have been manning phones from morning to night for the last several months, handling the mammoth scheduling of such a project. “It’s like building a pyramid,” she says. “Some things that sounded exciting and interesting originally turned out not be so interesting photographically. The players might be great, but then what they’re doing that particular day might not be.”

Collins vice president Patti Richards, who’s been involved in several of the company’s other books in the series, agrees that, logistically, this has been the hardest. “This is really much more difficult than the Soviet Union,” she says. “There we were negotiating with one organization and here we’re negotiating with over 200 organizations or individuals with a tremendous amount of power. In a place like the Soviet Union, once somebody high up gave their approval, they would do everything in their power to make it happen. But we have nothing like that going for us in Hollywood. Each place in town has its own chain of command.”

Unlike the other volumes that have chronicled countries, “A Day in the Life of Hollywood” is the first book to focus on life within an industry--an idea hatched by Collins president and publisher Lena Tabori.

“After all, Hollywood in itself almost seems to be its own country, with its own way of doing things. It just seemed like the logical extension of the series,” says Tabori, who initially began pitching the idea for the book to many of Hollywood’s key players, including executives at Sony and Disney, in early February.

But Goldblatt says access to the town’s heavy-hitters hasn’t been what’s made planning the book so difficult. According to her, it’s been the fact that everybody’s schedule seems to change so quickly, making it harder to coordinate the photographic assignments. “One day an executive says he’s available and then two days later we get a call from his office that he’s going to be out of town on the particular day we’re shooting. Then we’ve got to find somebody else.”

Goldblatt says that even Creative Artists Agency (CAA), famous for its military-like secrecy, opened its doors and allowed one of the first brainstorming sessions for the book to be held at its Beverly Hills headquarters. The agency has agreed to let the entire staff of the company pose for a group picture.

The list of executives and filmmakers who have agreed to be photographed for the book include such heavyweights as Sony chairman Peter Guber, Columbia president Mark Canton, producers Sherry Lansing, Scott Rudin and Howard W. Koch, director John Singleton on the set of his new film “Poetic Justice” and Madonna on the set of “Body of Evidence.” Not all the subjects will be photographed at work: Guber will be captured at home and possibly being chauffeured to the studio in a black Range Rover, while Canton has agreed to be photographed teaching at his daughter’s school, which he does once a week.

According to Goldblatt, access to the town’s studios has been easier than expected. Goldblatt says Sony’s Guber set somebody up from the studio to work on the project. “That became a model for all of the other studios to follow, and they’ve all been very helpful.”

Four photographers will descend upon Warner Bros. “At this point, we’re expecting to more or less give them access to just about anything,” says Charlotte Kandel, Warners vice president of publicity and promotion. “Obviously, though, if an executive is in a totally secret meeting, the photographers won’t be able to just walk into the office. If it’s a staff meeting, though, that’s not a problem. Basically, we’re going to just let the photographers wander freely around the studio.”

But it isn’t just the glamorous side of Hollywood that will be captured on film. Other assignments include following a struggling writing team from their daily writing session at the Food Court in the Burbank Mall to possible pitch meetings, and a visit with a married couple, both actors, trying to keep their family and careers going.

As for who will be snapping the pictures, the list is long and varied. There are photographers from such diverse magazines as Time, National Geographic and Germany’s Stern and numerous newspapers, including the New York Daily News and the Detroit Free Press. And, of course, a photo book on Hollywood would not be complete without the services of numerous movie still photographers and several well-known cinematographers. Even ex-White House and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer David Kennerly will be covering the action.

So, who and what end up in “A Day in the Life of Hollywood”? According to Tabori, of the more than 150,000 photographs that are expected to be taken during the 24 hours that the photographers are unleashed around town, only 225 images, selected by a team of international photo editors, will be chosen for the book, which will be published in November. “There are going to be an awful lot people who end up on the cutting room floor,” she says. “I hope they’re not too disappointed. But who knows? We’ll probably have enough for a second book.”

According to Richards, the folks who live and work in Hollywood aren’t the only ones with big egos who might be disappointed. “The photographers aren’t very humble, either,” she says. “None of them will probably be too happy if their pictures aren’t included.”