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
outside. We were on the edge of nature and the edge of the world." Maldon's Blue Boar Hotel, a 14th-century coaching inn, appeared on screen in its actual namesake, as it would have been where, historically, someone of Cora's social status would have stayed while traveling through Essex. Lawrence works with a hardy team of seven, and credits her frequent collaborator, LM Philippa Sutcliffe, for persistently tracking down property owners. "She's my right-hand woman and has been with me on many, many films and TV dramas. … I have total confidence in her ability," says Lawrence. "I depend hugely on my whole team. The success of shooting in such demanding landscape and in so many other kinds of places depended on them. No challenge was too great!" THE QUEEN OF TIDES Another critical location was North Fambridge on the River Crouch, located to the south of Maldon. While North Fambridge is a busy, modern marina, Harriet and her team were able to find pockets that worked for the late 1800s. It's here that Cora rents a whitewashed, two-story clapboard cottage next to the home of the missing girl's grieving family. The interiors for Cora's cottage and the Ransome family rectory were built on stage at OMA Film Studios in Enfield, North London, but the exteriors, with houses built right against the Essex sea wall to protect the low-lying country, are authentic and date back to the Victorian era "At a high spring tide, the water came so close to the gable of those houses," says Lawrence. "Then, if you get a very, very low spring tide, it was just like miles and miles of saltmarsh as far as you could see. "The tide dictated everything and the Essex locations we used were often underwater completely at high spring tides. For the first eight weeks in Essex, every day except one, was entirely dependent on the tides. And that one day was only not tide-driven because we had boat work on a reservoir!" The ebb and flow of the tide was critical to the shoot both visually and logistically. "There were places that I would go that would just be mud creeks, and then I'd go at a different state of the tide, and they would be completely covered by water," says Lawrence. "I love tide. I grew up sailing. I feel like I have a fairly good understanding of the tides. Empathy is not the right word, but the tide speaks to me, and I love the fact that the tide sort of drives everything there, and that's very present in the book as well. These people live on the edge of quite a harsh world and the tide drives everything in their lives." Mersea Island was used for cliffside beach scenes of Cora digging for fossils. The island can only be accessed by vehicle via a causeway, which is covered in water during high spring tide. The tide was perhaps of most concern at a ramshackle oyster hut that was within distant eyeshot of Cora's cottage. The location would become known as "Cracknell's Cottage" on "Cracknell's Island," named for its old hermit inhabitant who befriends Cora's son. "When I first saw that, it was just like this tiny little hut in the distance and there was nothing but sea in between me and the hut. It never crossed my mind that you could actually get to it except by boat," says Lawrence. "Then I went back at a different time … and you've got the saltmarshes between you and the hut." Normington quickly fell in love with the location. "It was so unique," says Normington. "It wasn't so much the house on the island that was my favorite location; it was the whole package... It is this sense of Cracknell living on his own little island surrounded by water; you just really got the sense that this serpent was always around him." "Alice, bless her, she said it was her favorite location ever !" says