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 | Summer 2026 • 27 AND THE FINALISTS ARE… THE LMGI AWARDS COMMITTEE FOR THE 13TH ANNUAL LMGI AWARDS PRESENTS Here are the LMGI Award finalists for your consideration: In the collaborative art of visual storytelling, world- building is a magnificent undertaking that we, as location professionals, embrace intuitively and fearlessly. We gather scattered pieces from a concrete reality and assemble them into an imagined scripted one—location by location. This year, we once again received scores of award submissions in our TV, Feature and Commercial categories, as well as those from Film Commissions, whose support we gratefully depend on. We viewed and discussed them all with the trained eye of our craft, assessing how what begins with words on a page has been rendered in the real world. We are proud to have presented a slate from the best of this past year's offerings and hope you have discovered some gems that were perhaps not as well-known, but whose created universes are very much worth a visit. Our nominee finalists have emerged from across oceans and continents, genres and eras for best embodying the transformative power of place. Their submission forms reveal the strategic thinking and artistic vision required to transform real-world locations into immersive cinematic worlds. "Locations were key to the storytelling," writes Hamnet SLM Lindsey Powell/LMGI, tasked with mapping the lives of William Shakespeare and his wife—from the hollow of the majestic birthing tree to a period farmhouse and village. "They were of great importance to the creative team in enhancing our world-building." For the "new Westeros world" of tournaments and surrounding encampments in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, a fabulous country estate provided "everything we required in terms of creating architecture for the our world and a feeling of place, " relates SLM Naomi Liston/LMGI. Often, building worlds requires a beautiful deception, blending the familiar with the foreign to construct a seamless illusion. From sites in London, Colombia and Spain, LM Carlos Velez Garcia notes that though most locations in The Night Manager Season 2 were fictional they existed in real places. "Rather than using generic backdrops, we relied on the authenticity of each territory to create a believable and cohesive dramatic world." "Locations frequently drive the plot forward by forcing characters to act," reveals SLM Dee Gregson/ LMGI in Agatha Christie's Seven Dials. "The series uses contrasting settings—country estates, hidden interiors, London spaces and travel routes—to deepen the mystery and influence how characters behave." "When the atmosphere feels authentic and believable, the characters are naturally grounded within it, allowing their actions to resonate with the historical moment portrayed," says LM Isabela Cunha, who was able to find 1970's Brazil in the city of Recife for the political drama The Secret Agent . "Real locations were carefully selected to authentically recreate the period, allowing Recife's urban landscape to shape the film's tone, atmosphere, and narrative." In Fallout Season 2, with narrative arcs played out in multiple timelines and locales, SLM Mandi Dillin/ LMGI asserts that "the locations are a part of the world-building that defines the characters and tell the audience which storyline we're currently in!" "The locations were an integral part in setting up all the different characters, the audience needed to believe their worlds which were all different," echoes Bugonia SLM Tom Woods. And for the diverse UK settings in the spy thriller Slow Horses Season 5, Ian Pollington/ LMGI sums it up: "All were a combination—but fitting to the piece." This year's 13th Annual LMGI Awards honors these world-builders, who meticulously plotted the physical coordinates that map out a narrative and motivate human action. In their own words, they have decisively described what we do: We build worlds, one breathtaking location at a time!