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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4 • LMGI COMPASS | Summer 2026 L E T T E R FROM THE PRESIDENT Dear Members, You've got great taste. I don't mean in the sense of fashion or restaurants, although I'm sure many of you do just fine. I mean the kind of scouting taste that's almost impossible to teach yet somehow becomes one of the earliest creative influences on every film or television production. Before lights are hung, costumes are fitted or scripts become a kaleidoscope of revisions, a story exists only as an idea waiting to occupy a physical space. The places you choose to scout influence everything that follows. A location is often treated as just another box to check before production begins. Find the house. Find the street. Find the diner. But anyone who's spent time doing your work understands that a location is never just a backdrop. It informs where the camera is placed, how light enters a space, how actors move through a scene, what production design supports and sometimes what the script itself ultimately becomes. Long before an audience sees a single frame, the character of a place has already begun shaping the character of the story. Technology has made it easier than ever to find a place. It still hasn't made it any easier to recognize the right one. That part has always belonged to us. Taste is one of my favorite words, partly because it resists definition. We recognize it immediately, yet it's almost impossible to reduce to a formula. Two location professionals can read the same scene, scout the same neighborhood and return with completely different choices. One may satisfy the script as written, while the other reveals something the story never imagined. The difference is rarely measured in square footage or parking. It lives in instinct, experience, and an understanding of story refined over years of taking the long way home, talking to strangers, and quietly collecting places like secrets. The best location professionals solve logistical problems every day with the technical acumen of a state department diplomat. They negotiate, coordinate, schedule, budget and somehow make the impossible seem routine. Alongside those skills is something much harder to quantify: taste. Every location scouted is a creative decision, and each of those decisions quietly ripples through every department that follows. What fascinates me is that this influence almost never announces itself. Nobody leaves a theater talking about a location manager's taste. They remember the River of Hills, the Riesenrad in Vienna or the Venice Canals. They remember a performance, a scene or the feeling a place gave them without ever wondering why it felt exactly right. That's taste at work, even if nobody calls it by name. It's one of the beautiful ironies of our profession: Some of the most influential creative work on a production is also among the least visible. That taste is worth celebrating. In your service, Danny Finn President Editor in Chief Stevie NelSoN Editors DiaNe FrieDmaN Paul meSSaNa eDwarD mazurek DoDD vickerS JJ leviNe LMGI Officers DaNNy FiNN, President robiN macDoNalD, 1st Vice President ryaN Schaetzle, 2nd Vice President eDwarD mazurek, Treasurer aNDrea keeNer, Secretary LMGI Board of Directors keN brooker mike FaNtaSia michael GlaSer haNNah JameS-JohNSoN eric kleiN aNGuS leDGerwooD Stevie NelSoN mo Qazzaz Scott trimble kay PoiNtiNG wilSoN LMGI Chairman Emeritus oriN keNNeDy Communications and Operations Director erika howarD The LMGI Compass is published quarterly by the Location Managers Guild International. LocationManagers.org Comments, editorial and photo submissions can be sent to: Compass@LocationManagers.org Publisher iNGleDoDD meDia Advertising iNGleDoDD meDia 310.207.4410 LMGI@IngleDodd.com www.IngleDoddMedia.com Official Magazine of Location Professionals Promoting Excellence on Location Worldwide C MPA SS