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/1513609
LMGI COMPASS | Winter 2024 • 13 independent Lithuania. In Riga, Latvia's capital, art nouveau multi-level apartment buildings comprise roughly a third of the city centre. Riga has the highest concentration of art nouveau in the world!" Enthuses Bensch, "Everybody outside the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, assumes they are the same, with the same culture, the same language, the same people—but they are not. They are so different, in fact, that people speak totally different languages and have to retreat to English or Russian to communicate with each other. "During our trip, we went to huge socialist housing estates that were used for HBO's Chernobyl. We went to locations from Tenet and everything in between. Vilnius' closed Lukiskes Prison, which hosted Stranger Things, offers a wide variety of looks in one fascinating location, even as it is being revamped as an art and music centre. John Rakich/LMGI, Tartu, Estonia together, they form a very good package of locations which are close to each other. I also think we have managed to assemble a great group of people and it made the trip super fun." In addition to touring, the attendees organized a seminar for Lithuanian film industry professionals. LM Becky Brake and former LMGI President Lori Balton joined LMGI President John Rakich, Markus Bensch, Klaus Darrelmann and E.J. Richards on a panel to share their take on creative location scouting and management. In Estonia, the LMGI partnered with a one-day conference organized by the Tartu Film Fund. Rakich provided taped opening remarks and Richards participated on several panels, including an on-the- go workshop on film permits and as the featured speaker for a panel on "A Case Study on Bringing Marvel to a Small Town." Piir moderated a panel that included Richards, Estonian Film Commissioner Pazikaite and LM Nele Paves on what makes a country attractive as a shooting destination. "From Czarist to art deco, to classical, to socialist modernism, to art nouveau, to modern, to sweeping landscapes and UNESCO- designated old town streets; prisons, mansions, opera and concert halls, castles, forgotten factories and shipyards, state-of-the-art repositories of knowledge and culture—the depth and breadth of the locations were astounding," shares Rakich. "The organization that went in to compacting so many visuals into such a limited time speaks volumes of the capability of the region's production support. "Lithuania's capital, Vilnius, is known for the baroque architecture of its medieval Old Town. Sections of Kaunas, the historic capital of Lithuania, seem to be fixed in time. The city had its most productive spurt in the '30s, heavily influenced by the Bauhaus movement and art deco. In the '90s, new construction boomed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rebirth of an Jonas Spokas/LMGI, Kreenholm factory, Narva, Estonia