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
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1480604
36 • LMGI COMPASS | Fall 2022 She ventures northeast to the rustic fishing hamlet of "Aldwinter" with her son and servant/best friend to investigate the existence of an animal that may have escaped evolution and has captured her imagination. At the same time, a young Aldwinter girl has gone missing in the marshlands. The villagers blame the serpent—but local vicar Will Ransome, played by Tom Hiddleston, rejects its very existence. Stirred into a fanatical fervor, the villagers are quick to find a scapegoat in Cora. Her modern thinking brings her into conflict with both the vicar and the locals whose beliefs are deeply rooted in folklore and superstition. It was Lawrence's eye for architecture and visual character that began the journey of casting locations for what would become a six-part miniseries. "Harriet found the rectory where the Ransome family live on that very first trip, and that was exciting because it was what I'd imagined; it was the kind of architecture that I was thinking about that was on the marshland," says executive producer and director Clio Barnard. "It was a location I scouted before the first lockdown on my first days scouting in Essex over a year before we shot it," recalls Lawrence. "It was isolated on the saltmarsh, at the end of a single- track road, on a muddy creek. It was perfect. The owners were so welcoming, and I couldn't have asked for better location hosts." ON THE ROAD AGAIN Lawrence worked with the British Film Commission to help establish the guidelines that would eventually get the UK film and television industry back on its feet. "Early-to-mid June, I was back out on the road and nobody else was around because most people didn't have a mandate to allow them to work, and our industry had done very well at getting back to work. "A lot of my scouting at that stage was just landscape, so I didn't need to see anyone; I didn't need to interact. I could just follow my nose down to the end of a little track, follow that to a creek and just explore with no one else around. I really cherish those moments," she says in retrospect. A lover of all sorts of history, Lawrence has worked on a number of period shows and films, including Suffragette and My Cousin Rachel. On both films, she collaborated with production designer Alice Normington. Lawrence had already been researching locations when Normington was brought on to The Essex Serpent. "I was thrilled to bits when I heard that Harriet was on the show," says Normington. "Her knowledge of architecture and history is phenomenal. We can be standing together looking at a building and she will tell me the chimney stack is pre-Georgian. Or we'll be looking at the windows and she'll say, 'Are you sure they're period, Alice?' I'll say, 'I think they're okay.' She'll say, 'Oh no, I think you'll find they're 50 years out.'" Lawrence's historical insight was invaluable, as Barnard had not done a period project before. "She's an enthusiast ... she loved the novel, she loved the scripts and she's excited, and that's what's so lovely about working with her," Barnard says. "Everyone who works within locations knows Harriet," says Crew films the search for the missing girl on the marsh