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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standpoint but would also get the right amount of snow and be able to work for a number of exteriors and interiors. They ended up finding their Ennis in two different towns: The first was Dalvík, which is about five hours away from Reykjavík by car and only 45 minutes by plane. Dalvík was selected early on due to the likelihood that it would get snow and, hopefully, hang onto it for a while—which it did— and distance aside, the town worked well and would end up being used for a number of key locations. But during scouting, the creative team had to imagine what everything would look like with snow … because there wasn't any. "We had zero snow all the way through prep up to almost Christmas," says Ensor, "then we had the break and the day we left, Iceland had their biggest snowfall in a long time." Taylor remembers the exact day. "We flew out on the 16th of December and it was snowing heavily. Once we came back, the first issue was how we were all going to get back up to the town," he laughs. When they finally did, the snow was waist high! "Perfect for the show," says Ensor, "but very difficult to operate in. We had to remove a level of snow to prep, but still try to make sure it looked virgin. That was tough!" Among the locations shot in Dalvík were the police station (an old post office), the liquor store (an old fisherman's shed) and numerous exteriors such as the gas station and roads for a fair amount of driving scenes and an intense car-crash sequence. "Dalvík was great because it didn't matter if you looked to the west or the north, it basically had the same feel as a lot of the towns in Alaska," says Thor, although he is quick to praise Dan Taylor and his art department. "They had to bring in a lot of stuff to really sell it," he says, "like American trucks, light poles, signage and things like that. Even for interiors. Things like American light switches and radiators which look different from ours. What they managed to do there was quite incredible." Despite being sold on the Dalvík locations, the creative team felt that they needed to expand the scale of "Ennis" beyond what Dalvik could offer. "What we needed," says Taylor, "was something with more of a commercial area. Dalvík, for me, made our exteriors feel too small, though I should note that the townspeople there were great about letting us take over things and it was a really fun location to work in." To add that scale, they settled on Keflavik, a town in the Reykjanes region of southwest Iceland and about 45 minutes by car from Reykjavík. "Thor and Einar showed us a former U.S. Army base built by the Americans in the '40s, and it was pretty great," says Winkler. There was only one problem … they needed to shoot in Keflavik first and preserve Dalvík for later in the schedule in the hopes of more snow. And there was very little snow in Keflavík. "We needed to do our big exteriors there: the hotel, the mine, Hank's place and Qavvik's bar," says Taylor, "so it had to be snow- covered." They ended up bringing snow down off the mountains. "It was just truck after truck bringing in snow," Taylor says, "and then we'd spread it around. The good news is that once we'd placed it, it would stay for a bit." Despite the difficulty, everyone agrees that the addition of Keflavík rounded out Ennis and added the scale they needed. Most of the high and wide exteriors were done there in addition to a few smaller yet pivotal sequences, such as Navarro's run-in with a wayward polar bear. "Don't get me wrong," Thor says, "there were a lot of locations on this show, but in a way, it was really like having only one big company move because we were able to find most of what we needed nearby Reykjavík in places like Fellsendi or Ölfus. So, it was kind of just shooting in the south and then our big move up to Dalvík in the north." THE ICE LAKE There are a number of scenes in the show set on the frozen ocean and, while other shows might consider doing it all on stage somewhere with fake ice, comfortable water temperatures and Silver Sky Mine