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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LMGI COMPASS | Winter 2019 • 35 was too far away from the city center. Then poor people moved in, the pools emptied and the elevators broke. Clichy-sous-Bois was the scene of the death of two youths which sparked nationwide ri- ots in 2005. Ironically, it was too realistic. And dangerous. We made the decision to move on rather than put the crew in harm's way." "We wanted immigrant neighborhoods," Phil- lips says. "We started off in places that were so authentic that they felt too strong, and scary. We scaled back to more peaceful locations." "Even scarier than the sketchy banlieues," jokes Balton, "was scouting the crazy traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe with the hope of filming our motor- cade passing French icons." After Paris, Balton headed for Morocco, which was a favorite filming location for everybody. "Morocco is a wonderful country with wonderful people," Phillips says. "Christian McWilliams had a great sense of what an American company was looking for. The government and the people in general were extremely helpful, talented and hardworking." Balton's favorite Moroccan location was the kasbah where the chief terrorist lived with his family. "It was extraordinary to be so welcomed by a culture. You are always invited into their homes for tea before any discussion. I even learned a little Ara- bic," she says. HERE IS AN INSIDE LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED IN EACH MAJOR LOCATION: MONTREAL MICHÈLE ST-ARNAUD, LMGI: "I was studying to be in the music busi- ness as a tour manager. A friend was requested to work on two movies, and she said, 'I can't do both. You have the spirit. Would you go and do it?' I never stopped. It was an accident. When I started, there wasn't really an industry in Montreal. It was local artsy movies with 25 crew members. We'd have 40 days filming and sometimes less. We had to learn on the fly. There was no school to teach us. My first big American production was the 1998 Snake Eyes, which was shot in Montreal." She was nominated for an LMGI Award a few years ago for her work on Brooklyn. Her 62 credits include Mrs. Parker and the Vi- cious Circle, Catch Me if You Can, The Spiderwick Chronicles, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, X-Men: Days of Future Past and The Glass Castle. She is currently working on Midway with direc- tor Roland Emmerich. "Michèle came highly recommended by our production man- ager," Phillips says. "She's used to working on feature films. She knows what she's doing, and she knows Montreal well." Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan HQ was Montreal, where most of the in- teriors were filmed on stages at MTL Grandé Studios. "We were the international head office," St-Arnaud says. "The production design, schedule and planning were all based out of Montreal. It was fun in a way that we learned how other people worked in dif- ferent countries and introduced different technologies. "I never worked with SetKeeper before, but it turned out to be a good way to share our files. The LMs would do their own scout- ing and report directly to the designer and the directors. I did not supervise the location teams in the other countries per se though. I would send them information about what the require- ments were at the beginning. Then they would be on their own. I was supervising the information platform that everyone could access easily from anywhere. "We did some Parisian sets here, but not the big, wide shots. When you see them driving through Paris, that really is Paris. But when you see them going into the mosque, the mosque in- terior is here in Montreal. Amer's apartment and the jihadists' Parisian hideout—-these interiors were shot in Montreal. We cre- ated the Alps area here. The Chamonix chalet, the hideout, the gas station, the highway and the woods were all local locations. "Although the scripts were not complete, we scouted options that the writers embraced. We had to know where things were happening, and we had to shoot out the locations as we were going along. We couldn't hold onto a location for five or six epi- sodes. We shot everything that was required from that location Photos courtesy of Amazon Prime Video