Location Managers Guild International

"I started out as a security guard. Looking for locations was a union job. I needed to get experience. Because security falls within the Location Department, Stacey thought it would be the best way to learn. She taught me about scouting and everything that falls within Location Departments. Once I had some experience and met enough managers, I got my days and made it into the union. My first film, Single White Female 2: The Psycho (2005), was nonunion and went straight to video. From there, I landed my first union show, Numbers, with Claudia Eastman. I also met Aida Rodgers there when she was the production supervisor. My first major film was The Number 23 with Jim Carrey (2007)." Georges got his start 18 years ago working on a set with location manager Greg Lazzaro. "I was a site rep for one of his locations on Underclassmen. Being a site rep allowed me to see all the production departments. I saw what Greg did as a location manager and thought it was something I could like doing. I like logistics, architecture and design and how setting can tell a story. We stayed in touch and I reached out to him just when he needed an assistant on the pilot 13 Graves. The roster was low, so I was able to get into the union. I began to build up my experience and abilities from there. Moreno says, "I was born and raised in Burbank, where everyone wants to work for the entertainment industry. When I was just in grade school, I'd carry my briefcase to school. I wanted to know how to get into the film business. I had the 'itch.' I had a business card when I was 10. "First, I thought I'd be a graphic designer. All my clients were producers, so I thought I could learn the business that way. I wanted to create films. Then 15 years ago, a friend said, 'Hey Alex. Do you want to work with me? You'll be the location manager, and I'll teach you everything. One of my projects will flip, and you'll be able to join the union.' So I worked for indie producers for 5-7 years, and finally, one project turned union.' "I started many moons ago in the industry under producer Suzanne Stanford as a PA," Kinney said, "just to be able to pay the rent and live in Venice/Los Angeles. Now I'm in the union with the Hollywood Teamsters Local 399 and currently working for executive producer Aida Rodgers and her team as a location scout, where I get to scout L.A. and California with Jonathan, Alexander, Alex and everyone else. It's a sweet dream!" 11 MEMORABLE PERRY MASON LOCATIONS Angels Flight: The historic narrow gauge funicular railway in DTLA. The site of the key scene where the gruesome discovery of a kidnapped baby sets the plot in motion. "There's such an amount of good stuff in DTLA," production designer John Goldsmith says. "When I first read the script and saw Angels Flight as a location, I thought, 'How do you solve this puzzle?' Angels Flight proved to be one of the most difficult locations to recreate, as most of what once surrounded it no longer exists. "We used the train car, track and bottom structure and basically created a world around it," Jansen says. "The folks who run the train were great to work with and really supportive of the project. The city owns the park to the left of it, and there's a parking structure to the right of it. We wanted to recreate an environment around it as it existed in the1930s. "The city moved the train in the 1960s. We used some historical photos to recreate the street-level drugstore on the left side. We also wrapped the parking structure in green screen fabric and had other green screen panels on giant forklifts—elevated and floated in the same movement of the train that our visual effects team would use later in post to digitally create the structures that existed on the left. We removed the traffic signals, meters, light poles, fences and whatever else was in the way. It took a lot of massaging to coordinate. "Tim (director Tim Van Patten) wanted a dolly shot following our Black Hat character carrying the baby to the train with people walking by and cars driving up and down the street. We had a difficult time trying to make the top of Angels Flight work because it is now surrounded by a modern plaza, so we ended up getting a parking lot nearby where we could recreate the look of the upper level street, ticket booth and entrance of the train. We then closed streets around the parking lot to bring the period cars and background actors to complete the look." "Cranes, lights and pulleys were everywhere," location scout Moreno says. "We'd film three or four days at a time. It was a massive undertaking. The producers said, 'We've got to do it right, so go for it.' Everybody bent over backward." Location scout Brian Kinney scouted many of the bigger locations, including Angels Flight. "Since Angels Flight (1901) was an actual place in the script, I scouted the current location of the vintage funicular cars and ticket booth," he says. "That was the easy part! Jonathan and Alexander had to deal with heavy lifting for jurisdictional issues and property rights around the area. A truss and green screen were built around the funicular car so that VFX could superimpose a 1930s exterior backdrop." The effort it took to bring this iconic landmark and its surroundings back to life indicates how important the recreation of the time and place were to telling this story, and how the Location Department faced the task. Downtown Los Angeles 1932: In many ways, hunting for Perry Mason locations in DTLA was the same as for any project. "You read the script, make your notes and then have a creative meeting to talk about what we're looking for," Moreno says. "Then it was 'Go get 'em.' There were no limits. We went deep and we went far to get the best thing. It wasn't, 'You've got to be close by the studio.' "On Perry Mason, we started a couple months earlier than usual because of the complexity of requests and clearing certain

• Cover
• 20-27 In My City Chicago
• 40-51 Cover-Story_Perry Mason
• 62-63 Martini shot