The Location Managers Guild International (LMGI) is the largest organization of Location Managers and Location Scouts in the motion picture, television, commercial and print production industries. Their membership plays a vital role in the creativ
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32 • LMGI COMPASS | Fall 2018 cut off from the public for 40 years and all the cities, towns and villages that hadn't changed much since the end of World War II. It was a location wonderland. It was unbelievable! "That's changed now with the real estate explosion. Everyone wants to build a house or an apartment building. A lot of loca- tions have been lost in the past 5-10 years. Now it's much more difficult and more expensive, and you have to look further away. Filming here has definitely become way more complicated, but it's still interesting. I often come across places no one has been to, but sometimes they may be 100-150 miles from Berlin." "We had heard about Klaus in Berlin and our great production designer, Eve Stewart, brought him on," Cantillon says. "Togeth- er, they found interesting and unique locations in which to tell our story." "Klaus is brilliant," Stewart says. "He's done so many films. His knowledge of that European area is extraordinary. We all called him Eeyore, the donkey in Winnie the Pooh, because he's so se- Photos by Klaus Darrelmann/LMGI rious about everything." Darrelmann agrees. "I think that's me: Optimistic by heart, but pessimistic by profession. That way you don't run into too many unpleasant surprises in your job. And as Eve rightly points out, the character of Eeyore is representing the professional part of my character pretty well I guess." Listing his skills, Stewart continues, "He's extremely patient and good-tempered in the face of grumpy crew members. I like his zen-like approach to location hunting. He has a good eye, as many location managers do, but he has the added bonus of being a really lovely individual. We had a great time working together." Stewart and Darrelmann spent six weeks looking for locations and found most of them in Berlin itself or within a few hours' drive. "I had worked in Berlin a few years before with Gore Verbinski on A Cure for Wellness at the same studios," Stewart says. "The city is so vibrant and has so many brilliant bits of ar- chitecture. This time we started from ground zero. The Girl in the Spider's Web is set in Sweden so we had to make Sweden in Ber- lin. We decided pretty quickly we'd concentrate on hard-edged brutalist concrete architecture that you get more of in Sweden. Not only would that suit the mood of the piece, but there's also a rich vein of it in Berlin." The production made the most of its few days in Stockholm. "We filmed the area around the exterior of Mikael Blomkvist's house," Stewart says. "We filmed Lisbeth Salander on her motorbike near the waterfront. We also shot quite a lot by the harbor just be- cause you could see the city in the distance and we needed to get some sea. It was tricky because it was meant to be really snowy, and of course, on the last possible day we were filming, the sun came out completely." How much time did Darrelmann and Stewart spend together? "Days and days and days," Stewart says. "It felt like we were mar- Klaus Darrelmann Germany doubles for Sweden.