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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32 • LMGI COMPASS | Fall 2017 says. "The owner then turned around and doubled or tripled the price. There was another building exactly the same type and size, so Emma said to the Maltese LM, 'Let's get that one.' Over the course of the next six hours, she managed to organize all six owners. We tracked them down and had them sign a bit of paper. Then Emma told the first guy, 'Get stuffed' in the nicest possible way. You have to have a certain amount of stubbornness and yet be charming." Both women found Munich to be "a very difficult movie," James admits. "We were quite a lot less experienced. The two of us learned an awful lot." Adds Pill, "That was baptism by fire for me." Their interactions with Spielberg were minimal. "The people around him were very pleasant," James says, "but we didn't hop in a car with him and drive around looking at locations. Some directors are low key and some arrive with bodyguards." The experience undoubtedly cemented a friendship between the women. "Ali probably knows me better than anyone else," Pill says. James started as Pill's assistant in 2004 on Goal! The Dream Begins. "We worked solidly together until 2011 (through Dark Shadows) and then got back together on Spectre," James says. "Then I got sent off to Mexico City (to handle the Day of the Dead sequences among others, and Emma headed up the London locations." The two, who are both 5 feet 3 inches tall, joke about being mistaken for each other. "People get us muddled up," James says. "They'll call her Ali and me Emma. We've given up correcting people. We support each other a lot. She's fully into what she does, and she's rarely out of work." James mentions Pill's willingness to help those just starting out. "Emma has been a great mentor to loads of people," she says. "There's no official training for location work. She certainly paved the way for me and other girls coming up. Women are very outnumbered on a film set, so we redress that balance a little bit. Emma has done everything from opening Tower Bridge for Thun- derbirds to being the first female location manager to work in Morocco—for both The Bourne Ultimatum and Inception. "There is not much she has not attempted on film over her career. "She leaves no stone unturned. She is a very good scout and researcher. She's good logistically at running films. In the U.K., we do everything on a film set from start to finish—from finding locations to figuring out where the toilets go. Emma has always been popular with designers and directors. She's tenacious and a good listener and good at adapting. She tries to make it fun." Not everything Pill has to do is fun. Handling legal contracts is not high on her fun list, but she truly loves her work. "I can travel," she says. "I can use my camera, and I have some influence in the creative process. That's the best part of the job. I have a logistics streak in me, and I love the challenge of finding locations and then bringing all the elements together. It's thrilling standing there on the night, watching it happen. "Bond was a pretty extraordinary experience. I got to do scouting all around Europe." Most thrilling was watching the climactic Thames River scene in Spectre, which took her and her team hundreds of hours to pull off. Pill recounts putting it all together. "The river sequence ran for 1½ miles, from Vauxhall Bridge to Hungerford Bridge, taking in Lambeth and Westminster bridges. It all had to be lit as the sequence was shot at night … Westminster Bridge being the very heart of London. We lit each bridge arch from a rigging boat (17 arches in total), through the nights for three weeks in advance as we had to close the Thames to river traffic. We lit from 10 rooftops. We positioned five lighting cranes along the river, and even had two 150-foot lighting cranes floating on river barges. We had 32 lighting generators that moved into position on a Friday night, and moved back out on a Sunday night. "We shot the sequence over eight weekends, which included closing Westminster Bridge. We had a hero helicopter and a camera ship that flew down the Thames up to Westminster Bridge at 150 feet above the water, following a speedboat with the actors onboard. Westminster Bridge and Lambeth Bridge were closed to the public at various times. Due to helicopter noise, we had to finish the flying element by midnight each time, and continue with non-noisy stuff up to dawn every morning. I had a 24-hour location team in London to manage all these elements, with a team on the night of 13 locations, 50 location PAs and 150 location security. We sent out approximately 11,000 resident and business letters over the eight-week period, letting people know of our activities, as we were in such a high-profile location." Callum McDougall, executive producer on Spectre, brought Pill to the film as supervising location manager. He had tried to work Left and opposite page top: Photos courtesy of Alcon Entertainment and Warner Bros.