Location Managers Guild International

LMGI COMPASS | Fall 2020 • 51 Pulling OŽ the Impossible During prep, Bay told Dario Nardella, the mayor of Florence, "I need to rip your city apart, but I'm going to show it like you've never seen it before." A statement like that might strike fear into the heart of a location manager—and certainly the mayor of a historic city—but miraculously, Latella and his team pulled off what, prior to 6 Underground, would've been viewed as impossible. "There were so many different plans during prep," said Latella, "which was the most difficult aspect. Locations would move from one city to another and then back again. In the end, we had more than 30 locations in Florence, an additional 10 in Siena and some in Taranto. Some areas we went to twice—once for shooting with the cast and again for shooting with stunt performers—and some of those shoots required multiple days to complete the action." Latella had a full-time staff of 16 and, for the bulk of the chase, they had anywhere between 100 and 200 location assistants per day to close down the streets. In the end, there were more than 15 meetings taken with the governments of the two primary cities in order to receive the necessary permissions. An entire team, dubbed the "Location Action Unit," was created, comprised of members of the production team, mayor's office, the Municipal Police, Viability Office, Public Transport Office and the Fine Arts Administration. In each meeting, giant three-ring binders of information had to be reviewed and agreed upon. Once the plan was complete, a final conference was held 20 days prior to the shoot at which some 45 people were in attendance representing all of the city offices involved, as well as officials from the various galleries and key locations. The Italian portion of the shoot wrapped in the first week of November with no damage caused to any of the locations despite the insane stunts. Latella said, "The scene where the Alfa goes through the entrance of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi and the Uffizi Courtyard were my favorites." "Being in Florence and Siena and doing the craziest car chase I've ever done," said Hook, "was the highlight for me. Florence and Siena are just stunning cities and Enrico and his team really made the impossible possible." Beecroft echoes that sentiment, saying, "Enrico became a close friend. He's such a gentleman, so forthright and incredibly honest and the team he built was just fantastic. They went far beyond. The location managers are the backbone of the shoot and I can't tell you how fortunate we were to have Enrico and his team on the film." From Italy to the UAE Having left Italy, the production jetted off to Abu Dhabi where location manager Simon Crook took over, though not without a little hitch. "I joined the show as location manager with a supervising location manager above me," he explained, "and the day I arrived in Abu Dhabi, I was told by that supervising manager that he was leaving the production … so having never worked with Michael or Jeffrey before, and since they weren't really available due to the Italian shoot, it took a bit of time for me to build up those relationships. I ended up doing a lot of communicating with J.J. Hook though which was great." The two met in 2000 while working as ALM's on The Mummy Returns. Among the locations created in Abu Dhabi were a Las Vegas casino (not an easy thing to do in a country where gambling is illegal!), the larger portion of the battle in Turgistan, the Hong Kong condo entrance and building site, a Delta Force raid in the Kabul mountains, a small scene written as Nigeria, and a sequence where a convoy is attacked at Liwa Sands, a two-lane highway surrounded for miles by rich, orange sand dunes. Photo courtesy of Enrico Latella/LMGI

• Cover
• 40-43 Hollywood Forever
• 44-53 6 UNDERGROUND
• 54-59 GRIFFIN
• 62-63 Martini shot