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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54 • LMGI COMPASS Winter 2024 STARTING OVER WITH A NEW PERSPECTIVE I got the new script and it was totally different," relates Fantasia. "It went from being a 'white savior' movie with the FBI on page one, to the movie that we have now, where we don't get to the FBI stuff until page 60-something." DiCaprio had officially moved into the role of Mollie's husband Ernest, and Jesse Plemons would now take on the role of FBI agent Tom White. Once the company was back up, they were still at the height of COVID, so the team was working remotely at first, and then within strict protocols. They were also now working for Apple as opposed to Paramount and much of the crew changed along with the studio. Tillinger Koskoff, Kacandes and Ferretti left the project and Daniel Lupi, a veteran of films with Steven Spielberg and Paul Thomas Anderson, joined with production designer Jack Fisk and his art department team. According to art director Matt Gatlin, when production designer Jack Fisk and his team came onto the project, "the movie was completely re-conceptualized and there was a shift away from an interpretation of the history to more of a recreation of the real places." And so, the location department basically started over— with the exception that Pawhuska would still be a stand-in for Fairfax. Kucharski and Martino did not return; Reft and Keener stayed on; Miranda Carnesalle/LMGI and George Alvarezzo/ LMGI joined the team. FINDING THE TALL GRASS Carnesalle was on her own much of the time searching for cinematic vistas for driving sequences, beauty shots of nature and plates. "You'd go out," she says, "and you'd stop because you'd be looking at this stunning tall grass waving in the wind and you'd think, 'God, this is just beautiful, but when you'd look through the camera, it would just kind of look like … nothing. It was a challenge to find a location where there would be enough visual interest … something to suggest scale and texture." Her photographs intrigued director of photography Rodrigo Prieto, and the two forged a close friendship. "Rodrigo saw the artist in her," says Fantasia. "She'd shoot various places for a moonrise or a sunrise and then she'd come back and I'd just say, 'go right to Rodrigo. If he's happy, I'm happy.'" "Scorsese completely relies on and trusts his team to review and vet locations before they ever come across his desk," says Carnesalle. "So, I'd go shoot and then Rodrigo and I would go through everything. When he found something he liked, that's when we'd go to Scorsese." Many of the locations for these shots were ultimately found on the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Osage County, which is the largest protected tract of tallgrass prairie in the world at almost 40,000 acres. KIHEKAH AVENUE The location in the film seen perhaps more than any other is Kihekah Avenue, the main thoroughfare of Pawhuska. "It didn't take long to realize we would be able to do a ton of filming on that street," explains Gatlin. Production would need to own a three-block section of the downtown area that included some 50 businesses, essentially turning it into a backlot. "At that point, 30% of the storefronts were empty," says Fantasia. "The rest varied from thriving to barely hanging on." Forty-one different entities owned the various properties on the street and the production would need to make