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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IN MY CITY: TORONTO the Royal Family still chooses to stay here. It has gorgeous period ballrooms and a stunning grand lobby that has been used on films like Chicago, RED and Cinderella Man. It is extremely production-friendly and their filming liaisons are beyond helpful. Another is picturesque in its own way—the former RL Hearn Generating Station situated along the Toronto port lands. A defunct power station decommissioned in 1993, now a monolithic vacant shell of exposed concrete tunnels and steel beams that is a DP's dream. Standing 105 feet to the roof and at 5.6 acres, it's large enough to fit 12 Parthenons inside. It's been used on TV projects like 12 Monkeys and Taken to large features like Resident Evil 5 and Pacific Rim. A personal favorite is a little outside of Toronto but worth it. Located in Oshawa just 45 minutes east is Parkwood Estate, the grand former residence of Canada's auto baron and founder of GM Canada, R. Samuel McLaughlin. A 55- room mansion in the Classic Revival style built in 1917, it is a stunning historical site that is wholly open to filming and has been used in productions such as Billy Madison, X-Men and Hannibal. Stevie: WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITES OR MOST MEMORABLE FILMING EXPERIENCES? JR: I've been lucky to work with helicopters, explosions, car chases and the like but the most memorable experience was also one of the trickiest. It was on the feature film Resident Evil: Afterlife, where I was the assistant location manager and there was a scene that called for a desolate shoreline written for Alaska, where the heroine comes across a derelict helicopter. We found a spot a few hours outside of Toronto along Lake Ontario. Sandbanks Provincial Park is a gorgeous stretch of sandy beach complete with dunes and long grass which looked perfect in the late fall. Needless to say, the director fell in love with it and we started the long process of communications with the province and the parks superintendent. From day one, we mentioned that the production would fly in a helicopter that would sit on the beach (not flying) as part of the scene. It was a shock a few weeks from filming when the parks supervisor nonchalantly mentioned it was illegal to land any aircraft on the beach. It turns out there was a section of provincial law that prohibited aircraft. With an irate producer and panicking director, I had very little time to comb through every section of the law to look for any loophole we might be able to find, which I did. We then began a campaign to petition the Minister of the Environment to change the act to allow a small window in which to land a helicopter. I can still remember the day the parks supervisor called me asking how we pulled it off as he was just sent a link to an official amendment to the act allowing for a four-day window for a helicopter to land at Sandbanks Provincial Park. To this day, it's still a thrill