LMGI COMPASS
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Summer 2023
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49
VISUAL SCOPE AND LARGE SCALE
"As soon as we moved into active prep, the scale of the
show hit me," Mo laughs. "Requests started pouring in
from all over and my role transitioned into planning,
logistics, deploying and supervising our department's
human resources, negotiating contracts and most
importantly, maintaining efficient communication with
other departments."
Overall, the roles in the department were fairly fluid. If
there was an area where support was needed, the team
would jump in and assist and, by the end of the show, the
department had grown to 22 full-time LMs, ALMs and an
additional 18 to 20 location PAs on set each day.
"There were no recurring locations on the show, so
we were always prepping, shooting and wrapping at the
same time," says Nolan, "and that overlap was continuous
for nearly a year. Often we had about 80 people in our
department and frequently over 100."
A BRAVURA OPENING SEQUENCE
At the start of the series, we're in 2003, years before Joel
will meet Ellie, and we get to experience the beginning of
the infection as the fungus takes hold of his neighbors
and turns them into crazed zombies. In a pulse-pounding
five-minute-plus sequence, Joel, his daughter and brother
jump into their truck and make a high-speed escape from
their once quiet cul-de-sac in "Austin, Texas."
"We scoured just about every town, neighborhood and
street in the province to find the right home and the right
street for that," Jason says. In fact, the team looked at
more than 300 houses and, when they finally found the
house and street they would end up using in an area
called High River, they all knew it was the one.
There was another factor at play that is important to
mention here: the real-life pandemic.
"People didn't really want to deal with a film crew and
COVID," Paino says, "and that's if they were even home in
the first place."
A lot of residents had fled towns and cities, so there were
places the team were interested in where the residents
just never turned up. Jason would have someone from
his team sitting on a kind of stakeout hoping the owners
would eventually come home—but they often didn't.
Finding the hero house on the cul-de-sac in High River
was only the beginning…
Photo courtesy of HBO/Liane Hentscher
