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LMGI COMPASS
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Fall 2021
footage of their night security guard and, when they played
back the footage, "the man looked absolutely terried," laughs
Robert. Who could blame him?
The most shocking incident happened on the third day: The
chandeliers that had been suspended from the crawlspace above
had been … adjusted. "To do what had been done, someone
would've had to come in with scaffolding or a man-lift and get up
into the rafters because you couldn't reach them from the oor
or even from above," says Robert. "Now, again, I don't normally
believe in that stuff but there was just no explanation."
That next morning, everyone came in and Robert called the
group over for a brief meeting. "With my team standing there
with me, I just looked up into the rafters and said, 'Listen…
we're gonna lm here, we'll nish up and leave it better than we
found it and I hope that you'll be OK with it.' I was kind of asking
permission if you will. After that, we didn't have any problems.
I think, from a LM point of view, we won her over and when we
left it was all good."
In other words, the last signoff on the contract was from a ghost.
REBUILDING THE BANK
Hauntings aside, returning production designer Edward Thomas
had only positive things to say about Robert, his team and of
shooting in South Africa.
"Cape Town is just an awesome place to lm," he says. "I'm their
biggest fan because it's a location that offers so many varied
landscapes and such a great palette for design. When you couple
that with location managers like Robert who really get storytelling
and know their business, it's just an absolute pleasure."
Edward was also thrilled with the bank location Robert found.
"Of course, we were hoping that we'd be able to use a real
location and when Robert took us inside that location it was
mostly an empty shell which was good because we could sort of
make it into what we needed," he says.
He had his art department basically put everything back in.
"Some of the counters existed," says Robert, "but after it was an
insurance company, the new owner had actually removed one
of the counters and in doing so had run afoul of the historical
society."
The shooting company located that original counter and
reinstalled it but, oddly, were ultimately asked to remove it again
when they left. Things are always complicated with a location
like that though, aren't they?
Another challenge was the atrium. "Above that glass was an
apartment block," recalls Edward, "and of course, we ended up
doing nights most of the time and you have 200-300 residents
there with lights blasting up through their windows, so the
work the Location Department had to do to ensure that those
residents whose lives would be affected by us were happy, I
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