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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road in front of it.' And you turn up and go, 'You'll be the perfect location for'—whatever—and you're dealing with people holding forth in a very old house that is sort of falling apart around them and could do with the money to keep it going." Adds Harriet, "Producers are hoping you will find Scotland or the moon within the M25, the vast moat around London, and you can't always do that." On The Personal History of David Copperfield, Harriet was given the freedom to get out her "Big Book of Country Houses" and find "a completely different look." Her search took her to the harbor at King's Lynn in Norfolk, the Angel Inn at Bury St. Edmonds in Suffolk (where Charles Dickens set part of The Pickwick Papers), and the narrow, cobbled streets of Hull, East Yorkshire, that "didn't get bombed in the war," she says. "Finding those kinds of streets in London is very hard these days—there is a handful used time and time again. What we found by going up to Hull was enormous variety … and the council was fantastically helpful because they're not London, they're not over filmed. London wouldn't have been able to give us seven simultaneous road closures and the freedom to dress all those streets." While Copperfield has been called a veiled autobiography of Dickens, and The Favourite concerns the 18th-century machinations surrounding Queen Anne, heritage sites also find a home in contemporary stories with little to do with Victorian authors or duck racing. The new thriller SAS: Red Notice concerns a hijacked Eurostar train. "Surprisingly, Eurostar didn't want to have anything to do with it," quips Jane, location manager for the film, which stars Sam Heughan as SAS operative Tom Buckingham. Much of the film was shot in Hungary, but Jane was able to utilize Englefield House, which had been on her radar since the start of her career. "My very first job as location manager," she recalls, "we needed a deer park. It was supposed to be Richmond Park, which is a Royal Park and you're not allowed to chase the deer around. Someone said, 'Try Englefield, they've got deer.' And Englefield said, 'Yeah, you can chase our deer. We don't care. We'll help you chase them.'" Jane, whose favorite charge is "putting British stories on the screen," was duly impressed—especially with the original painting of Englefield by John Constable. "The house is stuffed full of the most beautiful paintings, and to have your own Constable hanging on the wall was just incredible!" As it turned out, "We didn't get anywhere near the house on that occasion," but Jane made sure to include the estate during the scout for SAS: Red Notice. "As with any film, you read the script and try to work out what's going to help tell the story. "I also took them to Knebworth, a genuine Tudor, and they were quite taken with the suits of armor," but eventually, the The Personal History of David Copperfield filming at King's Lynn. Photo by Harriet Lawrence/LMGI