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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44 • LMGI COMPASS | Summer 2018 and we had constant reshoots. The tribe was so tired of us closing down their roads to get this scene. But everything we damaged, we made sure to restore, and we brought in a lot of money to the community during a time when a lot of families were on the verge of losing power and heat." Another pivotal sequence was filmed at a village on the Laguna Pueblo, where the Rio Grande was deep and wide enough for a dramatic night shot of migrants smuggling drugs across a river. "We needed rough terrain in a wooded area, with a pretty decent span of river flow and no communities in sight whatsoever," says Torrez. "To tell the story, it had to feel treacherous, like a place you needed to get away from or you were just not going to make it. Freezing cold water, gusting winds, shooting in the middle of the night. I felt so bad for some of those background actors but it looks spectacular." The closer Soldado's script got to the border, the harder it was for the production to cheat greater Albuquerque for the real thing. "That was our biggest challenge," says Kavanaugh. "Those border towns have their own look to them. They're right on the edge of society. The deeper into Mexico you go, it's a whole different feel, but when you're on the border, there's such a thin line for survival. So that's what we had to try and find in Albuquerque." For scenes set in Mexican cities and towns, Christensen says he considered Colombia but opted for Mexico City itself because it had the best local infrastructure, dollar for peso, to support filming. Soldado shot in the city's slums and financial district, and a ma- jor scene in the old town area where an explosion flips a car and there's a gun battle. But Christensen says they were filming in front of an old building that was leaning at a precarious angle and the schedule kept changing. "Finally, we pull the trigger and everybody's happy and we've got the road closed, there's security everywhere and nobody is even close to that build- ing. They roll the cars and it's a one-time deal, and it went off perfectly. The wall did not budge. To make the deal, to get the space, that's the stuff you pull off." It's a precarious balancing act to depict danger authentically in movies without causing actual harm, especially a violent film about terrorists and drug cartels. Security was a major concern for the production and Christensen spent several days in Mexico City before Soldado shot there, working with the company hired to protect the cast and crew. "I've set up security enough with other movies to know they were thorough," he says. "You take the steps to make it safe, then when I'm on set, I've got an eye out all the time." On scouts, Christensen has sometimes brought a police escort with him, on both sides of the border, and long before the mur- der of colleague, assistant location manager Carlos Muñoz Por- tal, who worked on both Sicario films and was killed in Mexico last year while scouting. But on Soldado, Luckinbill says there were "zero problems" with security. "It was as smooth a shoot in Mexico as we've had in any US city," he adds. Josh Brolin