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
Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1036928
LMGI COMPASS | Fall 2018 • 41 THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB LOCATION TEAM: Nothing of the above would have been possible without the support and work of my colleagues and assistants, most of the ones below I have known and been working with for 10 and more years: GERMAN CREW Steve Sauthoff, Key ALM Mario Wittmann, Constantin Brandenburg, ALMs Sabine Schulmeyer, ALM/2nd Unit Bashaar Wahab, Location Scout Alex Biehn, Location Coordinator Badr Zouhir, Set Manager SWEDISH CREW Martinus Eriksson, LM/1st Unit Josefine Rosengren, LM/2nd Unit Cecilia Zollitsch, ALM/1st Unit Lisbeth stands outside a burning building on location in Naka, Sweden. tt stead, it should look like Stockholm or at least nondescriptive. Our set decorator came up with a former CEO office in an area of town where you normally wouldn't go for that kind of thing. It was on top of this historic high-rise building, one of the first high-rises built in Berlin. In my opinion, it was a little too small for what we planned to do there, but it worked out, although it was a logistical nightmare. It was on the 12th floor, so we had to light everything from the inside or from the small 1m-wide balconies surrounding the room. There was only one elevator, and it was tiny. The shoot lasted two or three days. Nobody died. No one tried to kill themselves. Even more important: No one tried to kill me, although there were threats with all these stairs people sometimes had to walk up or down. So I would call it a success." Darrelmann's dry humor can be a stress-breaker. It certainly helped him when he decided to change careers. "I finished high school in 1985 and had the idea that being a doctor would be fun and a good job," he says. "I grew up in the northern countryside in West Germany, near Osnabrück, when the Iron Curtain was still there. I got my studying per- mit and arrived in Berlin in 1986 to study medicine at the Freie Universität Berlin. After completing more than half of the studies I thought, 'Maybe this is not the best idea for me.' But I couldn't think of anything else, so while I was at it, I finished my studies, just to have something done. I became a doctor in 1995, but I thought to myself, 'I can't do this for 40 years.' Back then it was a lot harder for young doctors, although nowadays it has become a little better. I was inter- ested in cardiology and intensive care medicine. In my ear- lier education, I took a brief look at cardiac surgery, which I found quite fascinating. But then I took a longer look at all the cardiac surgeons under the pressure of their job, and I didn't want to end up like them. A lot of them had weird, depressed personalities—which is the best way to put it." Darrelmann was living in Berlin when the Wall came down. "The downfall of the Berlin Wall was one of the most mem- orable moments of my life," he says. "You rarely have the chance to witness history that close and with a peaceful changeover from one political system to another at that scale. The '90s were a ball, a never-ending party. Maybe that's why I quit medicine." He got into locations work through a location manager friend, Markus Bensch, LMGI. "Markus called me to work with him on Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment Enemy at the Gates, my first project as a location manager," he says. "We used a huge open cast mining lake for all the scenes situated at the river Volga, and I had to stay there, down in the pit, for half a year to make sure we got all the big boats in there and that all the logistics for a crew of 400 and up to 600 extras in military gear were in place. I set up a small container- and-marquee tent city down there, building water pipes, high- currency electrical lines and roads to access this place with all the heavy equipment. That was quite something. I had my own wheel loader! I haven't had anything on that scale after that, even though I've done movies with bigger budgets. It was big fun, I liked it a lot, and as you can see nearly 20 years later, it definitely got me hooked."