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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28 • LMGI COMPASS | Spring 2023 The Fabelmans tracks a young Sammy Fabelman from his first exposure to the silver screen at an epic showing of The Greatest Show on Earth at a New Jersey movie theater, through a move to Arizona where he discovers his love of filmmaking and, eventually, to the "promised land" of California. Along the way, Sammy experiences the normal ups-and- downs of life mixed with the more heightened emotional experience of blatant anti-Semitism and the unfortunate dissolution of his parents' marriage that is shared in heart-breaking detail. Sammy eventually sets on the path that leads to Steven Spielberg's own legendary career as a filmmaker. The film is Spielberg's autobiography, and it would be the job of four-time California On Location Award- winning SLM Leann Emmert/LMGI and her team to help the director recreate his youth on screen by finding the locations that would transport both the filmmaker and the audience back in time. GETTING THE CALL Leann was working in Atlanta overseeing the Middle East set at the Warner Bros. feature Black Adam when she received a call checking her availability. Executive producer Carla Raij, a former location manager herself, had recently worked with Leann for the first time on camera tests for Maestro, the Bradley Cooper film produced by, among others, Steven Spielberg. "Leann had been a location manager for another producer I know who just adores her, so I brought her in on that quick test," says Carla. "And it didn't take me long to realize that Leann was everything I would need for The Fabelmans, which is not an easy thing to say when you come from locations like I do. You tend to judge that position quite harshly when it was your training ground." Initially, Carla was being intentionally vague about what the project was, but Leann had realized by that time that Black Adam wasn't going to be much of a challenge. The film had only two locations and she had worked with the producer on other shows and knew he'd be OK if she replaced herself. "Carla asked if I'd worked with production designer Rick Carter before," recalls Leann, "and right then, even though Carla didn't say what it was, I kind of knew what the level of the project might be because I knew who Rick worked with." Carter, an Academy Award-winning production designer, has worked almost exclusively with Spielberg, Cameron, Abrams and Zemeckis since the early '90s, and Leann had done two Spielberg films with him (War of the Worlds and Lincoln, for which Carter won the Oscar) as a key ALM and ALM, respectively. "I did ask straight out if it was Spielberg, but the most I could get out of Carla was that it was for Amblin," she says. Carla said she'd speak with Rick and get back to Leann. It didn't take long. Carla called back to say that Carter remembered Leann and loved her. The job was hers. It was early February of 2021, just over a year into the COVID-19 pandemic and still fresh into the re-start of production for the industry. WHERE TO TELL HIS STORY "Once I found out that we were going to do Steven Spielberg's life story, it was a little bit overwhelming at the start," says Leann. "I'm a big Spielberg fan, and the opportunity to be a part of telling his story, I mean, I have to admit… I literally cried when Carla told me I had the job." Almost immediately, Leann began what would ultimately be several weeks of conversations with Rick Carter by phone or Zoom while she prepared to leave