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LMGI COMPASS
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Summer 2020
Cassells also brought in his
longtime collaborator, Nancy
Haecker/LMGI, as supervising
location manager to help
change the dynamic in their
respective departments. "What
Nancy and I gave to the show
was more of a can-do attitude
and pushed everybody to reach
for a higher bar," Cassells said.
"My shorthand with her is she'll
always go for the best solution.
She's not only thinking of the
production, she's also thinking
about what the story needs."
Case in point: Haecker waited
outside the Vallejo mayor's
office to press for permission
to shoot on one of the piers on
Mare Island, a peninsula with
decaying warehouses, period
homes and the remains of a
defunct naval shipyard that was
established in the early 1850s—
all very cinematic but in need
of extensive environmental
remediation. The production
had been using other parts of the
island since the first season, but
Haecker wanted an old pier for a
climactic scene when one of the
show's villainous characters is
pushed into the water and left
to drown. "I think that location
might have been a bigger idea
because I was there. You don't
take no for an answer," she said.
Once Haecker and her team
got approval from the required
city, state and federal agencies,
they spent months prepping the
location so it would be safe for the
cast and crew. The pier required
structural tests, including
underwater divers to evaluate
the pylons. "Due to decades of
neglect, precautionary weight limits were established for the
safety of our crew," Haecker said. "But to 'make our day,' we
needed to park work trucks on the pier so we also emptied, stored
and shipped out literally tons of tainted water that accumulated
for decades in the electrical vaults along the pier." Then asbestos,
lead paint and metal debris had to be abated from the pier itself,
which had been heavily used by the military in the 1930s and '40s
to prevent hazardous debris from falling into the Napa River. "We
spent over one hundred thousand dollars cleaning up that little
piece of pier," Haecker said.
In the process, the Location Department got a crash course on
environmental hazards & remediation. "I had no real concept of
the cost," said Stevie Nelson/LMGI, who joined the show with
Haecker as a KALM. "If you've never done it, you have no idea.
For our boxing gym location in Seasons 3 and 4, we removed the
dropped ceiling and all the flaking lead paint so you could see this
beautiful barrel ceiling. We got rid of the asbestos, demolished
the walls, restored the vinyl flooring to polished concrete. It was
$40K for the abatement, then another $50K to put it all back so
we could return the keys."
Before & After Oakland's
16th Street Train Station.
Photos by Ehrin Davis/LMGI
