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LMGI COMPASS
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Winter 2019
famine or natural disaster," he says. "All
the signage was in Turkish. It was a big
location for us."
"Morocco has lots of different looks and
architecture," Ammon says. "You go there
and all you do is work. I spent so much
time in a car, driving from location to loca-
tion. When I started filmmaking, the idea
was that you never stopped walking until
you found an angle. Now it seems like peo-
ple drive up in their car, get out, say, 'Here
it is. Let's go.' We're not walking around
with our cameras. I keep walking. You'll of-
ten find a better angle if you walk three feet
in the other direction." One of the things
Ammon loves about Morocco "is that they
know big films," she says. "They aim high.
They weren't going to show us something
small. Christian and I pitched the whole
beach scene in Turkey. The site was very
empty. Three women come down this nar-
row gap to the sea and see items of cloth-
ing and debris—the buildup of human de-
bris after people had come so far. Carlton
was looking for a wide vista to see these
women walking alone, and Christian and I
found it."
One of Ammon's favorite locations was the
refugee camp. "Christian took me there,"
she says. "It was a place that started to de-
velop and then stopped. There were huge
areas of flat earth. They had put in street
lamps, and there were all these roads
around it. It was meant to be the border of
Turkey and Syria. It was really important to
me to have real houses in the background.
In so many of these camps, they build a life
outside them. The touching of these two
lives was very important."
Ammon found the Turkish brothel. "It was
an old restaurant that was shut down in
Morocco," she recalls. "I bugged Chris-
tian, 'You've got to get me in that build-
ing!' Christian is quite a talker, and that's
what you need. He's a great connector."
THE MOROCCO LOCATION TEAM:
Supervising Location Manager:
Christian McWilliams, LMGI
Location Manager: Toufiq Abouobayd
Location Coordinators: Joaod Charjai,
Mohamed Chrouate, Samir Gougas,
Mustapha Adidou, Mustapha Bediar,
Abdelcader Chaoui
Location Assistant: Hicham Moukhliss
