Location Managers Guild International

LMGI COMPASS | Summer 2020 • 21 Stevie: HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING IN LOCATIONS? HOW DID YOU START & WHAT DO YOU PRIMARILY WORK ON? ARNAUD KAISER: I was born in Paris but spent my teenage years in Orleans. After high school I moved back to Paris. At that time, I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I liked photography and thought that cinema schools in Paris might lead to an interesting job in that business. In 2002, I was introduced to location manager Gilles Castera, who hired me to work as a trainee on the film The Dreamers, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. At that time, I had a very incomplete and unrealistic vision of the job. The movie was a period film about the Paris riots of May 1968, it allowed me to discover all the prep work necessary to make the shoot possible. Even if my main tasks as a trainee were to pick up garbage and clean bathrooms, this shoot was the trigger that made me find the job in which I wanted to evolve. It also allowed me to meet an exceptional location manager who has then become my mentor (he now works as a production manager) and an amazing producer, John Bernard, producer of Peninsula Film, the production service company who I still mainly work with, who also taught me a lot. After this shoot, I began my career by working as a location PA with different location managers on various French feature films and TV series. Most of them were (very) small-budget movies. Three years later, I became an assistant location manager and I began to work on American blockbusters that came to shoot in France like Munich, Rush Hour 3 and The Bourne Ultimatum… Simultaneously, I started to scout locations. Scouting was the missing artistic part which for me makes this job even more exceptional. In 2008, I became a location manager on the French shoot part of Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and now I mainly work on international movies coming to France. Stevie: WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE PRIMARY DRAW FOR FILMING IN & AROUND PARIS & ITS SURROUNDING AREAS IN GENERAL? WHAT KIND OF "LOOKS" ARE THERE? WHAT ARE YOUR PERSONAL FAVORITES & WHY? AK: We are fortunate to have an architectural heritage that is very rich, dense and very often well preserved. For international productions, Paris is mainly attractive for its iconic landmarks; its singular architecture with its Haussmanian buildings, its bridges, parks or museums. But things are changing and productions are more interested in an authentic or even a more underground Paris rather than just a postcard image. The Parisian suburbs have many castles, as well as the financial district of La Defense and the industrial areas. This is also where you have the housing projects built between the '60s and '80s, some of which have buildings created by renowned architects such as Le Corbusier and Ricardo Bofill. These buildings have very strong architectural identities and can be used in dystopia movies like we did on The Hunger Games with Les Espaces d'Abraxas and Les Etoiles d'Ivry. I can't really say that I have personal favorites but I like locations that are new, unusual places. I did work on a horror movie called As Above So Below, directed by the Dowdle brothers, which takes places in the quarries and the catacombs of Paris. The catacombs are underground ossuaries that contain the remains of more than six million people. This place, which is 1.7 km long and is open to the public, is only a small part of a 280 km long network of tunnels built to consolidate the old stone quarries of Paris. This network of quarries lies far beneath the metro and sewer systems and is forbidden and inaccessible to the public. A majority of the scenes were filmed in quarries located on private properties in the Parisian suburbs, but some were also shot in the real catacombs and the Parisian quarries. I first needed to get access to these quarries to do a reference scout in order to understand what would be necessary to find as alternative locations in private quarries. All photos by Arnaud Kaiser/LMGI, unless otherwise noted. Facilities manager Fabrice Hoarau (left) with Arnaud. Photo courtesy of Arnaud Kaiser/LMGI Stevie Nelson gets an inside look at the City of Light from member Arnaud Kaiser.

• Cover
• 02-03 TOC
• 28-35 13 REASONS WHY-V2
• 62-63 MARTINI SHOT