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/1521905
32 • LMGI COMPASS Spring 2024 MONEY TALKS, JUST NOT IN TOKYO The only way to make it work was for Aikawa and his team to go back again and again in order to gain the trust of the new owners and build real relationships with them. It took more than a month to get permission to shoot the offices of Ishida and the Chihara-kai again and roughly the same amount of time to re-secure permission to shoot the Katagiri home and The Meicho. The police station was eventually recreated on stage, but that was by no means an easy negotiation as stage space in Tokyo is at a premium. "We don't have a ton of stage options in or near the city to begin with," says Satch Watanabe, "and then Netflix rented all the big stages from Toho Studios for something like 10 years, that made it even harder for other projects to get space. People started renting out warehouses. Now you have to go even further away from the city." And, of course, in a city as densely packed as Tokyo, it's not just about the locations themselves but where to keep all the support vehicles and the "backyard," or what North American productions call "basecamp." AKASAKA STREET: UNPRECEDENTED In Season 1, Adelstein's American friend Samantha (played by Rachel Keller). decides to open her own hostess club in Tokyo's trendy Akasaka District, comprised of luxury hotels, upscale bistros and various corporate headquarters. The interior of her club, which throughout the season goes from being under construction to open and full of customers, would be shot inside of a converted gymnasium, but for one pivotal scene in Season 2, the producing team had a request. They wanted to shoot the exterior on the real Akasaka Street. More than that, they wanted to essentially control the entire block for a period of time and fill it with police vehicles. "No big Japanese series or film had ever shot on that street," says Aikawa, "mostly because they would never be willing to expend the enormous time and resources required to get the approval, so if we got it, it would be unprecedented." Even Rogers understood that sometimes production could expect too much from its location team. "I can say, 'I want this, I want that,' but in a city like Tokyo in particular, you have to trust your team. If Masa says they can't make it work, and I know how hard they've tried, I have to go, 'fine, give me the script back, I'll give everyone a new version tomorrow morning with a new location.'" But Masa and his team knew there was no way to fake Akasaka Street. And on a show that, after only one season, had grown in respect for having gotten things right—even among the Japanese community—they knew they simply had to find a way to make it work. "We made the initial contact with the police six months before," says Aikawa, "and they told us they would only consider our proposal after we had gotten permission to Shinjuki, Tokyo. Photo by James Lisle