Location Managers Guild International

LMGI COMPASS | Fall 2021 • 53 In the original lm, six strangers nd themselves locked into a series of mystery rooms by an evil corporation called Minos and must "use their wits to survive." This being a horror lm, not all of them do … but some do, and that becomes the setup for Escape Room: Tournament of Champions. The trick for the second lm was building on the elements set up by the rst movie and being careful not to repeat the same gags. The surviving cast of the rst lm—no spoilers here—are joined by new cast members and together, they're thrust into new and terrifying rooms to try to escape from. In an interview with horror fan site Bloody Disgusting, the lm's director, Adam Robitel, explains, "In the rst lm, we used re, cold, gravity, poison gas and at the end of the lm, hinted that the corporation was going to hijack a plane. This time, Minos is raising their game and the set pieces had to go one step further." For the new lm, even more elaborately endish challenges were created: a subway train jolted by the electricity that powers it, a postcard-pretty technicolor beach, complete with quicksand, a street in New York City pelted by acid rain and a beautiful art deco bank, with deadly lasers to protect its cache. And while most of the locations would eventually be built on stage (including the Manhattan Subway platform, subway car, the beach sequence and a exterior New York street scene), Robert was brought in to nd and secure the critical bank location in addition to guring out the logistics for the rest of the shoot, which would once again take place in Cape Town. REAL LOCATIONS The creative team sent Robert the script and he got to work right away looking for the few locations that would be shot at practical locations. The nature of these kinds of lms requires that most sets be built so that the lmmakers have total control. But for Tournament of Champions, they envisioned the look and feel of an art deco bank for one key sequence, and they wanted it to be real. As with shooting in any major city these days, just nding a location that will be able to work from a logistical standpoint is a challenge, to say nothing of nding something that matches the lmmaker's vision and is possible to take over for an extended period. "Of course, the location we found that the director and production designer wanted was right in the middle of the city," laughs Robert. The building had belonged to an insurance company at one time, then a kind of nightclub or event space and had now been turned an into apartment building. "It was your typical nightmare location," Robert says. "There's not enough parking and the city won't permit you with more than ve spaces on any one street around it—which is not even enough for two trucks. Then there are other businesses surrounding you on all sides that you have to deal with and then there are the residents in the building." They were able to make it work by staggering when the crew could gain access. "Lighting would come in and then move. Set dressing would come in and then move. And we managed to make friends with all the neighbours which previous crews really hadn't done. I think we were very successful in that." In one matter, though, things got off to a very rocky start. THE HAUNTING "The building came with a ghost," Robert explains, with the caveat that he's not a big believer in things like that. "To me," he says, "there's always science behind it." Early on in negotiations, Robert heard that a woman had committed suicide many years earlier by jumping off the top of the building and falling through a glass atrium. He didn't think much of it at the time, but that changed soon after they gained access to the location. "We started to notice some strange things happening right away. Just really weird stuff," he says. At the time, the atrium which served as a kind of skylight substructure, was still in place. Between the skylight and the glass roof was a crawlspace and the crew had removed some of the glass so that they could hang these enormous art deco chandeliers down for the bank interior. "At night, we would lock the whole place up with chains and I was always the last out," Robert explains. "Well, the next day, we came in and all the doors had been forced open from the inside out." While they didn't have CCTV footage of the doors, they did have Robert Bentley/LMGI

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• 18-27 Cover-Story_Underground Railroad
• 50-59 Escape
• 62-63 Martini shot