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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34 • LMGI COMPASS | Winter 2025 When UK SLM Jethro Ensor/LMGI got the call from HBO to join the location team in Iceland on True Detective: Night Country, he didn't hesitate to accept. "I was just there to support the Truenorth team as they were already setting things up. They're world class!" Jethro had just finished up on the international Netflix series 3 Body Problem and already had a history with HBO as the SLM on the TV series The Nevers. His location cred would help the Icelandic team mesh with the English way of doing things. He was raised with his sister between the small town of Pocklington in the north of England and the bustling city of London. Growing up, he hadn't intended to get into the film and television industry, though film was a part of his life from an early age. "We had one little cinema in our town," Jethro recalls, "and you'd go with your family and the whole town would be there. I guess that's where I first became aware of film." There was also a family friend who had access to the emerging video tape market. "We would watch stuff I definitely shouldn't have been seeing at a young age like Jaws. And then, as I got older, of course, it was Alien. I loved John Carpenter. We were also raised on the Marx Brothers or the Jacques Tati film Monsieur Hulot's Holiday. We really were exposed to quite a bit." By the time he attended university, Jethro thought he might pursue a career in the music industry. "I can't play an instrument," he says, "but I thought that was going to be the thing. Maybe get into being a roadie or a manager." But an opportunity to work as a floor runner on commercials changed everything. "When you're a student, you go, 'wait, someone's going to pay me 50 quid cash a day to run around getting stuff, and they'll feed me?! I'm in!'" On one auspicious day, he was assigned to assist the location department. "That's where this career began," he says. "It's like, 'can you drop some letters off and, while you're there, knock on a door for us?' Well, I mean, yeah, of course I can go knock on a door and it's actually fun because you never know what's beyond it. Then you're chatting with really fascinating people and it's great. "LM Keith Pettinato took me under his wing and started training me. It taught me that this is not just a job. You're building a team and creating this camaraderie because you need that. I've carried that with me my whole career." After taking off for a couple of years to travel the world and even manage a bar in Sydney, Australia, for a bit, he returned to England. A call from his friend LM Rupert Bray pulled him back into the world of filmmaking. The two would end up working together for several years. "Rupert really put me through it," says Jethro. "You know, in those days, there were no Google maps or things like that. So, I'd have to make the movement orders and do all that stuff. And then I'd give them to Rupert, and he would mark them up or correct them with a big red pen on the recce buses." Eventually, he would move up to LM on an established UK series and TV movies which led to a career-making opportunity to work on The Hollow Crown, a massive production based on Shakespeare's Richard III that entailed huge battle sequences. "That was the first experience for me of the massive machine that is streaming television. It was a beast," he says. "I think it worked out because I knew about crowds, I knew about period and I really knew how to find stuff. The one thing I didn't really know then was the scale of VFX that happens on these shows. That was a huge learning curve." From then on, talking to the VFX team as often as possible has become his mission. "I'm very interested in the VFX guys because it's helpful to have a sense of what they need because, you know, one day you turn around and suddenly there's a 40-foot blue screen blocking a road that people had forgotten to mention," he laughs. All that learned experience carried him onto the HBO series The Nevers, for which he earned an LMGI Award nomination in 2021 for "Outstanding Locations in a Period Television Series." His newfound understanding of VFX definitely came into play on 3 Body Problem and in Iceland on Night Country, for which he would receive his second LMGI Award nomination, along with his Truenorth colleagues. This time in the category of "Outstanding Locations in a TV Serial Program, Anthology, MOW, or Limited Series." Having had great mentors of his own, Jethro believes in passing on what he's learned. "I like the idea of 'each one, teach one.' There are always young people coming through and I try to impress upon my LMs and ALMs that they should really try to give everyone a chance. Despite the uncertainties in our industry, we want to build a generation of people that do this. And I'm really fortunate that I've got two people with me who've been with me for years. One is now a fantastic LM in his own right who I trust implicitly and it's great to have that backing and that's what you learn when you've got great mentors." SLM JETHRO ENSOR/LMGI True Detective production designer Dan Taylor with SLM Jethro Ensor/LMGI. Photo courtesy of Jethro Ensor/LMGI.