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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52 • LMGI COMPASS | Summer 2019 planning." The reason for all that planning? The showrunners and producers are always trying to push the envelope in terms of action and what is possible on television. "I always say 'Let's supersize it,'" says Bernard, "and that's how everyone on this show thinks. None of us will ever settle." "Supersizing" is what everyone in the scout van was thinking as they drove around looking at locations for the Season 1 finale. The writers knew they had to come up with a sequence that was bigger than anything they'd done previously. Not an easy task when the cast and crew pull off at least one massive action se- quence, if not more, every single week. They were scouting for a car-chase sequence involving a massive 18-wheeler semi which has been loaded with explosives and the S.W.A.T. team's MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicle—basically a tank on wheels. The scene was initially written to end in an intersection, but that changed when a casual comment was uttered in the van that day: "Someone said, 'Wouldn't it be cool if…' and then went on to describe a much larger version of the sequence," says Bohanan. "It became 'what if it's a longer car chase where the truck is on one street and the MRAP is on another, tracking them in parallel, and then at the end, the MRAP rams the truck trailer causing a huge explosion … and then what if there's a helicopter filming it all from above?'" The phrase, "Wouldn't it be cool if," can strike fear into the heart of most producers and members of the Location Department, but by the time they'd reached episode 1.22 on S.W.A.T., it wasn't fear that struck Bernard, Bohanan or Surkin. It was more a ques- tion of logistics versus time; did they have enough time to prop- erly plan and prep such a massive sequence? Fortunately, they tend to scout three to four episodes ahead. "Every time the writers come up with something like a truck loaded with explosives going off in the middle of the city, you kind of just laugh, like 'who in the city is going to let us do some- thing like that?'" says Bernard. "But we have the best Location Department in television, so I wasn't worried." In the van, Ber- nard turned to look at Bohanan and Surkin and just smiled. Surkin practically started making calls right then, Bohanan and Surkin immediately began thinking of logistics. "We knew we would have to shoot on a weekend in order to close the amount of streets we'd need to shoot the chase that leads up to the explo- sion with helicopters, drones and the Russian Arm," says Surkin. Initially, they estimated they'd need to lock down a minimum of six blocks on one street and six blocks on a parallel street just for picture, then maybe another four or five blocks beyond that for safety and support, as well as all of the intersecting streets. That alone would be enough to consider, but of course, there was more. They'd also need to find a nearby base camp location large enough to accommodate a feature film scale crew (the show al- ways carries SFX, stunts and 2nd unit), not to mention locking down a landing pad or another nearby lot for the helicopter. "On S.W.A.T., very often, the key is finding big enough lots for up to three base camps and then looking for locations nearby," says scout Dominick Clark, LMGI." Of course, the Location Department on S.W.A.T., like all Location Departments, is always coming up against creative expectations and the realities of safety and control in a major city. Clark was sent to find a suitable location for the entire sequence they'd be allowed to completely shut down. Safety is always his primary concern. "For this particular sequence, because of the aerial ele- ment, it was imperative that we find an area with no live-wires like electrical or telephone poles. It needed to be just a bare in- tersection. Not an easy thing to find in L.A., as you can imag- ine," said Clark. Once he'd found the location with an assist from FilmL.A., KALM Logan White got sent in. According to Bohanan, "He is the neighborhood negotiator." Ultimately, the team was able to lock down The Reef LA Mart's parking lot where the explosion would happen, but the real question was whether the city would allow them to shut down such a large run-up of streets before reaching the lot or if they "I hadn't done anything as big as the truck sequence in television before and I hadn't seen anything of that scale in L.A. since we used to shoot big fea- tures here," says Bernard. "I don't know how Keith and Aviv were able to pull it off, honestly." L to R: Michael Trucco as Eric Wells and Shemar Moore as Daniel "Hondo" Harrelson. Photo by Bill Inoshita/CBS