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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18 • LMGI COMPASS | Fall 2020 same time, I founded Lookout Film & TV, a small production company, with my brothers Kico and Juli. They combined this work with locations, helping me whenever necessary. Nowadays, they both work in locations, frequently with me. When my sister Silvia returned from Germany where she worked as a 1st AD for many years, she joined the family business, working on numerous German TV movies in Spain. Even my mother joined our production company, working in accounts and administration. Production work took us all over the entire country, and I learned to deal with all kinds of owners and official institutions. I got to know Spain from Catalonia to Extremadura. I did the famous Camino de Santiago through northern Spain several times, marveling at my good fortune to film centuries-old monuments and churches. Spain is a multicultural country with very different regions and ways of understanding life. Apart from traveling and photographing diverse spaces, my job was to understand different regional cultures and idiosyncrasies, respect natural and protected spaces, comply with the rules and most importantly, always leave the location in the same condition as we found it, or better, whenever possible. During these years as my body healed, I had the pleasure of making small forays as a stuntman in some big productions and a precision driver in numerous commercials, something that I enjoyed very much. In this way, I got to resuscitate my short-lived career as a stuntman. This is how I ended up as a Cuban soldier pointing a shotgun at Halle Berry when she throws herself off a cliff in James Bond's Die Another Day, or running in front of nine brave bulls while Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz raced along on a motorcycle during the Knight and Day's chase! Meanwhile, more large international productions were coming to Spain. I learned so much from working with great directors, production designers and SLMs from abroad. I have great memories of the scout for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. When they called, they were in the middle of a recce for a paradisiacal beach on the east coast of Spain. I realized that it would be better found in the wonderful coves throughout the Balearic Islands. When they saw the options I proposed, they sent me to photograph all the islands by land and by sea. I was suddenly scouting these incredible places, the envy of any traveler. One day after a shoot, perched on the crest of a giant dune in Morocco's Merzouga Desert (one of the most magical and relatively accessible places I've ever been), I received a call from a location colleague from the Canary Island of Tenerife. She was proposing nothing less than attending to a scout that Ridley Scott was going to do the next day in Andalusia, starting from the Málaga Airport. I was so overjoyed, I almost rolled down the dune. I packed my bags, drove more than 12 crazy hours to Tangier, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and arrived in Málaga the next day just in time for the scout. James Grant, the current location manager, introduced me to the rest of the scout crew. I spent the next three days on a helicopter with Ridley Scott and production designer Arthur Max, touring Andalusia from the marshes of Seville's Guadalquivir River to the fabulous desert of Almeria. It was for Exodus which months later would be shot in Spain. Working with these cinematic geniuses on a project of such magnitude, I learned the degree of demand and pressure that a location manager can be subjected to. They continually asked questions, looking for suggestions as Out scouting with director Ridley Scott for Exodus. Shooting Warrior Nun at Almodóvar del Rio Castle in Córdoba