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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46 • LMGI COMPASS | Spring 2018 es things in the right way. She takes things head-on and deals with them. I learned from that. If you don't deal with it, it's al- ways sitting there. If you address it, it disappears." Graves spent much of her time on what she calls "the haunted house" location in the West Adams District. "It was a very di- lapidated house that needed a lot of love," she says. "It looked spooky. Its foundation was falling apart. The set decorators did a phenomenal job. Oprah Winfrey and Mindy Kaling shot there." This location kept Graves busy. "We were there three different times, and I dealt with the neighborhood," she says. "It's heavily lived-in—a lot of homes tight together. I'd get sig- natures and arrange placement of our equipment. I got to know hundreds of people." She also worked on the Murry house location. "We moved the homeowners out for three months," she says. "Then they com- pletely cleared the house and dressed it." Finding that house was one of Taylor's biggest concerns. "Ava wanted a traditional neighborhood that had been one thing, became another thing and was going back to being fancy," Shohan explains. "We were looking at an upper middle-class neighborhood that became all black and was now gentrifying. We wanted that urban pat- tern. Then the house needed to have a sense of welcome and embrace in terms of its character. 'What do you want it to say about the family?' Once we defined the area, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack." "I can't begin to tell you how many houses we saw," Taylor says. "Ava had a very specific look in mind. Also, there was a certain geography that had to happen with some of the scenes. When someone is walking through the house, they can see the outdoors through certain windows. From the top of the stair- case, they could look down and see the front door. We finally ing lots. We rented four different parking lots and had to coor- dinate them for breakfast, lunch, background parking, some for crew, and base camp. It was a lot of logistics." Also complicating matters was the 5K run scheduled for one of the prep days. Adequate space for restrooms was another challenge. "Normally, we'd have multiple sets of trailer porta potties and pump them in the morning or at night," Petros says. "Instead, we had 2 four-bangers, and we pumped them every hour. One of the lifeguards said in his 30 years of lifeguarding, he'd never seen anything as close to this big happen on the beach in Venice. It was a lot of hoops to jump through, but peo- ple were very helpful." Talking about working for Taylor, she says, "What I love about her is that if you need help, she's there to help you. But if you don't, she'll stay away, trusting she hired the right people. Some managers want so much information, they slow you down because they're just on you. Or there are managers who won't give you help. Alison wasn't wasting my time filling her in with things she didn't need to be involved in. I appreciated her trusting me." ALM Velvet Graves, LMGI adds, "I feel so grateful to even know Alison. She encourages people and brings out the best in them. She builds her team. She doesn't tear them down. She's ap- proachable. With her, there are no guessing games. There were times when she could have easily exploded, but she approach- A scene filmed on Venice Beach.