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LMGI COMPASS
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Spring 2020
time they miss you, but when they hit,
they'll drop two to three inches of rain
in a very short time. Several producers
I have worked with saw the potential
danger of losing access to their sets,
roads washing out, etc., and spent the
money to build gravel roads. The roads
saved us, allowing us access in and out
after the flooding.
Fall, hands down, has the best weather.
If you can work with the leaves
changing, this is the best time to film
in northern NM.
These of course, are the extremes
we prepare for, but for the most part,
filming in Santa Fe is a 365-day affair.
Santa Fe is a high-end tourist
destination with expensive galleries
and restaurants so all filming in the
city has to work closely with these
businesses to make sure all of their
concerns are addressed. We don't have
a lot of filming that takes place in the
city proper so they're not burned out on
production and we work hard to keep it
that way.
Stevie: WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITES OR MOST
MEMORABLE FILMING EXPERIENCES?
CP:
I was fortunate a few years ago to
work for Joel and Ethan Coen on The
Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Their movies
have been a large part of why I chose to
work in this industry. Todd Christensen/
LMGI, supervising location manager,
hired me to do a multi-state scout
looking for a pristine river valley, as well
as rolling plains as far as the eye can
see. I scouted several states, many of
the locations in Colorado were buried in
snow so I had to snowshoe in. At some
point in the middle of one of those trips,
I looked around, taking it all in—I was
there, in the middle of one of the most
beautiful basins in the United States,
being paid, working on a Coen brothers'
movie. I would go on to manage the
two locations; Ophir, Colorado, and
Scottsbluff, Nebraska. I'm grateful for
Todd bringing me on the project.
IN MY CITY: SANTA FE
Ford Ranch
New Mexico State Prison
