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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LMGI COMPASS | Winter 2025 • 33 "To do this, you have to very carefully consider the manner in which you distribute that weight," says Thor. "For example, we had to bring a snowcat that pulls a kind of little shelter for cast, like a warming room. So, we'd bring that all the way out on the ice and we knew the weight of the shelter plus the snowcat. Then we'd do the math and determine that we needed to maintain 10 meters between the snowcat and the technocrane." There was one moment involving the technocrane, though, that gave some of the crew pause. "We had been there shooting for a bit and we knew there was a layer on the surface and a little water underneath after about maybe 6 cm or 7 cm depth," says Thor, "but we also knew that didn't affect the strength of the ice. Still, the crew noticed the ice was starting to bend." A few of them came to Thor and voiced their concern. "I totally respected them for making it known immediately," he adds, "but we knew it was alright." After a chat, the crew members relaxed… Until they began to hear cracking sounds and what almost sounded like lasers or high- tension wires snapping. "When it's cold—and some of the nights were super cold even for Iceland—there's tension in the ice," Thor says. The variation in temperature can range between -5 degrees Celsius up to as much as -20, and then there's the water that's flowing beneath the surface. These factors affect the tension in the ice, and it begins to make odd noises. Some of the sound can come from the surface, but most comes from below. "It can sound like glass breaking or, other times, it's this super weird sound, like, a whale or something. It comes from under the surface and, I mean, I totally understood these people. Like how in the hell should they trust my word alone, not having any experience working on the ice?" Thor says. Thor and the team had to prove the solidity of the ice to the crew by drilling down, and with them watching, proving its depth. When Thor and the engineer took measurements, they found there was still 45 cm of ice beneath the thinner top layer. "45 cm can hold the weight of a truck," Thor explains. The focus on safety extended off the ice, too, of course. "When it comes to bad weather," Thor says, "it doesn't need to be up on a glacier or out on an ice lake. Our department would have to monitor the crew in the towns as well, because some nights a storm would come in and you'd have no visibility at all for maybe 10 minutes or more. Total whiteout." This meant the location team had to make sure everyone knew what to do in any extreme weather event and that the crew were accounted for throughout each day and at the end of the day, too, to make sure they'd gotten safely back to their hotels. In the north, most of the crew were based in the town of Akureyri, which lies at the base of Eyjafjörður Fjord. It was about a 25-minute drive to Dalvík from there and so anytime anyone left, they'd have to caravan. And then there were the shuttle buses. "Yeah," Thor says. "Keeping the buses on the road was a thing, The corpscicle Fiona's house