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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50 • LMGI COMPASS | Summer 2019 you before the break, but you've reached our max pay scale and we needed to find someone cheaper." So that was it. He packed up his belongings and walked out. Hallmark had altered his course for the second time. "Looking back, getting cut loose like that was the best thing that could have happened to me because it propelled me to the next step which was joining the LMGI." A friend helped Surkin get into the Guild and then Tristan Daoussis, LMGI and Scott Poole connected him to the team on Fox's 24 where he got the rest of his union days. Once Surkin had his days, Scott Poole would prove to be a frequent collaborator, and Surkin would often alternate between working with Poole and Keith Bohanan, LMGI. Poole and Bohanan, in turn, would leapfrog shows for producer Paul F. Bernard, depending on their availability. Bernard and his partner Jim Scura had just wrapped up a series called Angie Tribeca, with Bohanan and were eager to dive into something. They asked their agents to get them "the hardest pilot in L.A." and quickly found themselves sitting with Justin Lin and Shawn Ryan discussing S.W.A.T. "Careful what you wish for," laughs Bernard. With a green light from CBS, Bernard immediately brought in Scott Poole as location manager for the pilot with Surkin as key ALM. "I knew, with Shawn Ryan, Justin Lin and CBS, it was gonna be a huge show, so having Scott and Aviv and their team makes all the difference," says Bernard. The team likes working for Bernard due to the fact that he keeps the mood of his shows as light as possible. The pilot, shot in a whirlwind 18 days, was nearly wall-to-wall action. "We killed our- selves," says Surkin. "It was, without a doubt, the hardest pilot I've ever done." When the show was picked up to series, Poole was unavailable so Bernard brought in Bo- hanan as supervising location manager… Surkin got the next call. Bohanan took on the herculean task of Season 1 and part of Season 2 before handing the show off to Surkin who stepped up. "The producer called and said, 'Keith is here and we'd love to have you with us,'" Surkin says. He initially turned them down. "After the pilot, I said I would never do the series if it got picked up," he explains. After a lot of thought, Surkin reconsidered and had a serious conversation with his wife. "Of course, she wants the best for our fam- ily," Surkin says, "but she supported me and said, 'go do it. It's gonna be a big show.'" Then she quoted the oft-repeated Hollywood phrase, "Go big or go home." Of course, if ever there was a show that was going to go "big," it was S.W.A.T., which means that Surkin and the members of his team rarely "go home." "I don't think Aviv and his team ever get a day to relax. It's pretty much a seven-day-a- week job," says Bernard. "We talk all week, we talk on the weekends, there's constant Closed city housing LA, cemetary