Location Managers Guild International

LMGI COMPASS | Winter 2020 • 45 for the producers and Location Department. In 2017, 37-year-old location ccout Carlos Portal was murdered in the rural Mexican city of Temascalapa while scouting for the Netflix series Narcos. Since then, fewer companies have ventured into Mexico to shoot, which makes the team from Mayans M.C. an outlier. "We always scout for safety first," says Cooley, who usually goes down as part of an advance team, often with production de- signer Marco Niro. "We don't travel alone. I'll always have either a companion or a member of our security team with us. That goes a long way toward not being targeted." Once in Mexico, Cooley connects with different agencies and locals in each area. Their security team will also research everything about a given area. It's all very carefully planned out. While tragic events like the loss of Portal absolutely influence the team and heighten concerns, Cooley notes that bad things can happen anywhere, mentioning, "we also lost our colleague Ed French in 2017—shot and killed in a tourist area in San Francisco by thieves targeting his high-end camera. "Ultimately, safety is a concern no matter where we go," says Cooley, "this can be a dangerous job. We're carrying expensive equipment and we're often going into places that we're strangers in. It's about being as careful as possible about where you are, what you're trying to do and who you're going with." ELACES PESALES PESAL ELATSPS Whether shooting in Mexico City or along the border in Tecate, one of the keys to pulling it off smoothly is in the relationship Cooley and his team have created with Homeland Security, CBP (California Border Patrol) and various other government agen- cies on both sides, as well as with their local Mexican producers. In Mexico, the team works with Kinema Films. "Jose Ludlow and his team are amazing," says Cooley, "people like our local scout Manuel Campillo/LMGI and Dalia Sierra just make it so easy. We refer to each other as brothers without borders." The affection is mutual. "Thirty-something years in the busi- ness," says Ludlow, "and with all honesty, I have never worked with a team as professional and well prepared as Jon Paré and Dan Cooley. They should write a manual .It's truly a pleasure working with them." For most shooting companies, the goal is to get in and get out. To vanish, hopefully without a trace, once filming is completed. That's not the case on this show. Often, they're venturing into economically depressed areas where just a little generosity can go a long way, and for the Mayans crew, it's also about making an impact in the communities they work with. "We try to hire locally whenever we're down there," says Cooley. "We want the commu- nity to be a part of it because they are a part of it. These are their homes. We also try to help out whenever we can." Recently, the company was filming at a school just across the border in Tecate, and some of the crew members noticed there wasn't any shade for the kids, so they decided to do something about it. "We actually built these overhangs so the kids had some place to cool off," Cooley says. There was also a broken-down basketball court badly in need of repair. "Our grip department cut new plywood backboards, double-sided, the art department painted them, and then we went out and bought new rims and balls for the kids," Cooley says. "After wrap, everyone came down and played basketball with the crew. It was great." While shooting another episode where members of the M.C. ride into a small border town and proceed to hand out baskets of food to people, the producers had an idea. "On our lunch break during that sequence," Cooley recalls, "we had a couple of trucks pull up and we actually gave out food to members of the com- munity with similar gift baskets." The ability to do things like that during the shoot does more than unite the filmmakers with the communities they're shooting in, it unites the cast and crew as well, and adds to the feeling of camaraderie and connection. It's cliché to say that your cast and crew feel like family, but on Mayans, that was part of the goal from the beginning. Showrunner Elgin James, who has what could be referred to as a "colorful past," explains, "it comes from my own desire to find a home. A tribe. A lot of us on the show come from troubled backgrounds, and when you search for safety, love and support on the streets, that usually just leads to more darkness. But when you channel those same desires through art, you finally find your tribe." James believes that one of the most beautiful as- pects of being a storyteller is the unity that comes from a bunch of random people teaming up to create. "We are all people who

• Cover
• 42-49 MAYANS
• 64-69 Jason Wisch
• 74-75 Martini Shot