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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"The elements were a huge complication on this shoot," adds Ohanian. "And we quickly realized were going to have to do a lot of shifting the schedule around because you'd come into set and all of the red dirt would have turned to mud." Interestingly, simply bringing in another truckload of dirt wasn't always an immediate fix. "If you brought in more dirt," says Ohanian, "and just dropped it on top of the wet soil, it would soak into the mud—and that's if it wasn't just going to keep raining—so it wasn't about just dealing with rain days in the schedule, you had to reconfigure at least two days after the rain to let it dry out." The good thing about letting it dry out is that, when it did, it hardened like cement leaving any tire ruts from carriages and period cars behind. "It made it that much more authentic," says Beachler, and this was true wherever we laid down fresh soil, which included the Farmhouse set, Downtown Clarksdale, the Church set, Sammie's House and The Train Depot. "It was on all of us to find ways to keep the cameras rolling and go shoot something else," Ohanian adds. "Often we would ask Hannah and her team to build us cover sets which they would manage to do in record time, but this movie was one where every day we would all come in looking at the weather apps on our phones just to be sure what we could shoot." The Juke Joint By far, the most pivotal location in the film is the Juke Joint, an old sawmill the brothers take over from some less than savory characters. There were three key elements that Coogler wanted for the Juke Joint: He wanted it to feel completely isolated, slightly abandoned, and most importantly there needed to be a small body of water, like a bayou, directly behind the sawmill. Early in the process, the team decided it would be a full build. But where to build it was the question. "We looked and looked and looked," says Beachler. "And eventually, I changed the design a bit to fit the types of locations Elston was showing us, which is sometimes more beneficial in the end. The problem with putting something that big on a waterway was that we couldn't find a place that was isolated enough." That's when Howard had an out-of-the-box idea. He was scouring Google maps with his scout, Jimmy Trotter, looking at satellite views and it suddenly just hit them. "Right there in Lower St. Bernard Parish, adjacent to Orleans Parish, there's an abandoned golf course called Braithwaite Park Golf Course, and it's been abandoned since Katrina," Howard says. "So, imagine 18 holes of a golf course after all these years. The 200-year-old oak trees are there. It has ponds because those are the obstructions that you have on a golf course, right? I knew it would work." Beachler, meanwhile, was back at the office waiting for a miracle. "And so, one day Elston comes The completed Juke Joint set. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures