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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52 • LMGI COMPASS | Winter 2021 LMGI: THE NEXT GENERATION BY PAUL MESSANA PM: How long have you been working in locations and what do you primarily work on? ED: I started in 2014 on the indie fi lm Kicks as the location scout and assisting on set. I kept location assisting on indies and PAing on anything I could get onto to stay afl oat. My big break was getting into the union to be on the fi rst season of 13 Reasons Why. As a product of the Bay Area, I do it all–- TV, features and commercials. I was on Goliath (episodic) and Venom 2 (feature) right before the coronavirus shut everything down, so I've maintained that mix of projects. As production begins picking back up, I've just booked a feature that fi lms in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. PM: Was there a particular moment while scouting/assistant managing that really made you think about this fi eld as a long- term career worth pursuing? Are there particular people or productions that have inspired you to take this current career path? ED: I always took my fi lm career one step at a time and set low expectations for myself. When I got on my fi rst indie fi lm, I was very proud of myself and my scouting but I didn't know if anything else would come of it. In the early days, every project I got on I would think, "this is great but I have to be ready to accept that there might not be another one and I'll need to pivot." Things just kept rolling, especially because of the support of Dave Weber/LMGI and Ryan Wylie—two fantastic managers who mentored me and sent a lot of work my way. Working with Nancy Haecker/LMGI and Stevie Nelson/LMGI on 13 Reasons Why gave me a template for accomplishing work at a studio level. They're young, smart and enthusiastic about what they do. In this occasional column, KALM Paul Messana, a genXer himself, talks with the upcoming generation of location professionals on the rise. PROFILE ON: EHRIN DAVIS AGE: 31 HOME BASE: Oakland, California POSITION: Location Scout/Key Assistant Location Manager PAUL MESSANA: Where were you born and how did you get started in locations? EHRIN DAVIS: I was raised on a 160-acre ranch in rural Mendocino County with no outside power lines running to it. All of our power came from solar and water from a spring. We didn't have cable which made me all the more obsessed with the movies and TV shows that my aunt would tape on VHS and mail us. We moved to Lake Tahoe when I was in sixth grade which to me was the equivalent of a big city. I majored in global studies with an emphasis in Latin America at UC Santa Barbara. I spent my junior year studying abroad in Brazil and learning Portuguese. After school, I was pretty nomadic; I had stints working on remote construction projects in Panama and Papua New Guinea. When I fi rst moved to Oakland, I got onto an indie fi lm called Kicks through my (now) wife's friend who was the executive producer. The EP took over as location manager and brought me on as the scout. I didn't know much about Oakland, but I worked hard to familiarize myself with neighborhoods through scouting. Looking back, I had no idea what I was doing (those fi rst scout photos are cringe-worthy) but I landed us some great locations.