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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LMGI COMPASS | Summer 2022 • 31 In the beginning, prep was a bit of a moving target. All they knew for sure was that the shoot would be divided into three chunks: aerial, ground and marine work. That was enough for Mike to start pulling his team together. "A Series of High-Speed Passes…" He immediately brought on scouts and a couple of KALMs. "One of the rst things I did was ask Donny Martino/LMGI to get me maps for the aerial work." In fact, Mike was eventually given the call sign "Maps" due to his, let's call it, obsession with them. The team had to literally cover all of the bases, so they scouted (and eventually shot) them all in addition to using them as launch points for the jets. Naval Air Station North Island (NASNI) in Coronado, California, Naval Air Station (NAS) Fallon, in Nevada, which has been home to the TOPGUN program since 1996, NAS Lemoore, in California's Central Valley, the Naval Air Facility (NAF) in El Centro, California, the Naval Air Weapons Station (NAWS) China Lake in Ridgecrest, California, and Naval Air Station (NAS) Whidbey Island (near Oak Harbor, Washington) were all called upon to serve this ambitious mission. Mike also knew they'd need access to an aircraft carrier at sea. "Things were changing every day," he says. "I'd be there with the brain trust and then I'd get on the phone or send an email and say, 'make this work.' And, amazingly, most of the time my team did. Everybody else does the work, you know? Donny Martino, Nancy Wong/LMGI, Teddy Alvarez/LMGI, George Alvarezzo/LMGI, Mike Reft/LMGI, Mike Louis/LMGI … there are many more. I schedule, budget and look pretty. I think as we went on, the Navy realized we knew what we were doing." Nancy Wong went to look at NASNI (which would become one of the production's primary hubs), along with Mike Louis, George Alvarezzo and Teddy Alvarez. Teddy would also oversee a shoot at California's Inyokern Airport which would serve as the site of Maverick's private hangar, as well as work at Lemoor and Whidbey Island. With NASNI in-process, Nancy and Donny Martino went up to South Lake Tahoe to nd a meadow, forest and aireld locations, all of which feature heavily in the third act of the lm. Scout Lori Balton went searching for a number of other critical off-base locations, including the home of Maverick's new love interest, Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly), which was found in San Pedro, California, and the home of a certain admiral which would initially shoot in Point Loma and subsequently be re-shot at the Wattles House and Gardens in Los Angeles. "South Lake Tahoe was another great location," says Nancy. "The community in general and the Parks Ofce were a pleasure to work with. I loved working there as much as at NASNI!" Mission Objectives The third act of the lm features a practical aerial sequence which may be one of the most extraordinary ever put on lm. Where the rst lm frequently relied on model planes for exterior shots and actors sitting in "buck" cockpits in front of rear-projection screens, the mandate for TGM from the very start was that they were going to shoot with the cast in real F-18s and all of the shots of planes whooshing by would be real—even if the plane was just 30 feet off the deck. That's where Capt. Brian (call sign Ferg) Ferguson comes in. A 30-year veteran of the Navy, Ferg would represent the military for the lm and ultimately become a key ally for Mike and the team—a job he had turned down multiple times. "My work with Mike and his team wasn't necessarily one of my, for lack of a better term, 'mission objectives,'" says Ferg, "the primary of which were safety and protecting the interests of the Navy, its core values and image. But as I moved into the project and began to work with all of the various departments, including the Location Department, I kind of became a jack-of-all-trades and word got around to everyone like, 'hey, ask Ferg, he'll know,' which is almost never true by the way." Ferg soon realized that what Mike and the team were dealing with was probably unlike anything they'd dealt with before. "I've sat at length with Mike and talked to him about some of the Photo courtesy of Mike Fantasia/LMGI