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LMGI COMPASS
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Fall 2025
Howard jumped at the opportunity. And Costner even made
sure he was traveled with the production to Miami for that
portion of the shoot!
When the project wrapped, Howard was longing for home,
so he returned to New Orleans just at the start of the Louisiana
gold rush for film and TV production. He quickly found himself
working as an ALM on films like The Pelican Brief, and Interview
with the Vampire. Before long, he fast-tracked his way to his first
location manager job, and he knew he'd found his place.
"I loved it immediately," Howard says. "I'm a people person,
you know, I love to talk. And I kind of immediately understood
the logistics in terms of what the job required. We're like the main
artery for every department—there isn't anything that happens
that doesn't swing by us. And I think, over the years, what gets
asked of us has gotten more and more complicated."
Just four years after that first job on JFK in 1996, Howard was
managing his first TV series, The Big Easy. The show lasted
just two seasons, but he was off and running in the business
and quickly became the man to know if you wanted to shoot in
Louisiana.
That's how he first met production designer Hannah Beachler.
Two Dogs with a Bone
It was 2008 and Beachler and Howard were working on Ruffian,
a period feature set in the '70s that was shooting in Shreveport.
"When I met him," recalls Hannah, "we just hit it off right away."
The two developed a shorthand with one another that reflected
the value of their friendship.
As both of their careers ascended, they kept in touch and
whenever Beachler got to work in the region, she knew she could
count on Elston.
"It was just easy with him, you know?" Beachler says. "And
because he knew the area so well and because I had been there
for a while, I could turn to him and go, 'we need a blah blah blah,'
or 'I wanna go down to Lou's place,' or 'you know that spot back
on the Pomes property by the fence where they did that thing?
That's the spot.' And then he'll present other things.
"But I'm like a dog with a bone. And I'll be like, 'that's the spot,
get me that.'"
She says with Howard, there's never any question about
whether he'll find the right place or manage to secure a location.
"He's also a dog with a bone," she says, "and he'd push until we
got whatever we needed. We were already behind the eight ball
when we started Sinners, so we had to jump in right away which
is where that shorthand with Elston comes in handy."
Before: Donaldsonville, Louisianna, standing in for Clarksdale, Mississippi
