SOUTH
OF THE
BORDER
by Nancy Mills
Our Man in Mexico,
Horacio Rodriguez
22
•
LMGI COMPASS
|
Spring 2019
F
inding 30 locations for Roma, which received 10 Oscar
nominations and won three Oscars (Best Foreign
Language Film, Best Director and Best Cinematography),
was an enormous challenge for Horacio Rodriguez, LMGI and
his location team. But the even bigger challenge was not
being able to read the script beforehand.
Rodriguez, 47, who was born in Poza Rica, Veracruz,
Mexico, first thought it would create major difficulties, but he
adapted—as he always does. "As we all know, the script and
the work plan are the bible of an entire production team," he
says. "At the beginning, for all department heads not having
a script and finding out that we should work without a script
was really terrible. But as weeks of preparation progressed, it
was very enriching to have conversations with Alfonso Cuarón
in a direct and very constant way, where he told us about
some characters. At locations, he told us how he saw them.
"Fortunately on Roma, the department heads and Alfonso
were more or less the same age, and therefore, their
memories were in some cases shared by many of us. That
helped to visualize what Alfonso told us."
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