director on my phone where Spider-Man would stand and he'd
give feedback."
It's a far cry from the days of packing the Yellow Pages and
ordinance survey map into the car and driving round for days
finding locations. "Now, we can do so much from internet searching
before we even drive off, and then, there's Sat Nav in the car,"
enthuses UK-based SLM Harriet Lawrence/LMGI, whose credits
include Avenue 5 and The Essex Serpent.
Many scouts working on a project don't even meet each other.
"You'll send them a brief and script, give them a week, and they'll
just send pictures digitally," says Christian McWilliams/LMGI, a
SLM who spent many years working in Morocco on projects like
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan and
is now based in the UK.
The one potential downside to this 'instant gratification' is
increased expectations. Location managers going out on scouts
are expected to deliver quality images by the end of each day.
"That's a lot of pressure, but it's the breaks of the business," says
Fantasia.
OUT AND ABOUT
It's not just about relying on Google searches, digital libraries
and iPhone snaps though. "Nothing beats seeing the location for
yourself because the internet can show you something and then
you get there and new buildings have been constructed. Sometimes
the image has even been manipulated or wrongly labeled," warns
Lawrence. "On The Essex Serpent, we spent months following
every track on the ordinance survey map down to the edge of the
estuary to see what was there."
"On the Mindhunters series, I rode my motorbike round every
road within two hours of our production base to assess the lay
of the land and make mental notes, so when something came
up in the script, I could make suggestions," says SLM Bill Doyle/
LMGI, who's also worked as a co-producer for David Fincher since
Photo by Peter Gluck /LMGI
Photo courtesy Mike Fantasia/LMGI
