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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42 • LMGI COMPASS | Summer 2022 production seemed a better avenue for her skills. She started as a runner in Scotland around 2000. "It was a completely different landscape then, as a young female starting out. It's a very male- dominated industry, it was quite tough. And in the UK, we were not going through the Golden Age of Film and Television that we are now, and you have to fight-fight-fight for every single job that you've got." Keenly interested in historical architecture and landscape, Liston felt she had more to contribute and gravitated toward location work. She learned quickly on the job and hit her stride with the Tartan Shorts, a Scottish government-funded film initiative that financed short films shown at international festivals and aired on BBC. After working in commercials, feature films and children's television for several years, she moved to Northern Ireland in 2008. One day, she received a phone call from a colleague asking for a favor: it was producer Mark Huffam. "He said, 'Would you come and help out on this TV series and do it at a lower rate, and if it does go to second series, you'll get a higher rate?' So, I said, 'Fine, no problem'—Well, that was Game of Thrones. So that then turned into 10 years of my life." After the record-smashing fantasy show wrapped, Liston went back to Scotland to film the Avengers movies in 2017 and 2018. "In 2019, as I was sort of half-finishing the Game of Thrones prequel pilot Bloodmoon, Mark phoned me again and said, 'I've got a script I'm going to send you. Can you go out and scout?' and I said, 'no problem,' and of course, that was The Northman. "I love history, so I know about Vikings and the Iron Age," she elaborates. "It's a piece of history that's close to my heart and I already know quite a bit about." Liston realized that the beautifully diverse landscapes of Northern Ireland, several of which were featured in Game of Thrones, fit the story perfectly. "As I was reading the script, I could imagine everywhere, and I phoned up Mark and said, 'you're right, we could 100 percent really do this here.' Creatively for me, it was a real chance. I thought, 'I'm going to grab this because I could really do something here. I can make this thing in the best way possible.'" MAPPING A VIKING WORLD On a production scale, The Northman was a behemoth project. It's Eggers' most complex film to date, and he brought in several creative collaborators to help shape its look and vision. "Nothing is casual with Robert," says the film's co-producer, Francesca Cingolani. "He comes from deep study on every subject, every aspect of the movie." The story, like the Viking empire itself, spans thousands of miles and multiple people-groups, requiring deft logistics to scout and construct diverse, period-perfect sets on exposed mountains and ocean cliffs, rivers and dense forest— all replicated to look Icelandic. "He wanted to create this world from scratch, so it was going to be building all these fantastic sets at these far-flung locations," says unit production manager Alex Boyd. From erecting villages on protected lands to accessing remote terrain to accommodate hundreds of horses and extras, Liston's work was cut out for her. Boyd pulled out all the stops to manage the film's operational Photo by Naomi Liston/LMGI