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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Ultimately, much of Blade Runner 2049 was filmed on stages because, Pill says, "Roger wanted to control the light." But there were also plenty of locations to find. "Hungary is a fantastic region with amazing post-war industrial architecture that's just standing there," she says. "It's a location manager's dream. We don't have that in the U.K. As soon as a building is abandoned, developers take it over. There are quite a lot of abandoned buildings on the outskirts of Budapest. I felt like an urban explorer, going into them. They're not necessarily safe. If I found something visual, I'd look at safety issues—have air-quality tests, asbestos checks, possibly put up special netting to make sure nothing was falling off buildings." Her hardest location to find? "A street in a winter environment," she says. "It had to fit into a futuristic world, not be typical Budapest architecture. We managed to find a couple possibilities. One of them is in the film's trailer, where Ryan Gosling is walking down the street and it's very snowy. It was a full night shoot in a residential area of Budapest. The locals were very accommodating." To get the job done, Pill worked closely with her Hungarian location team. "I relied on them more than if I were working in my own country," she says. "My Hungarian is not good. It's one of the hardest languages to learn, but I had a great team who spoke fluent English." Working in Hungary proved smoother than Pill expected. "You have to adapt to styles, local techniques and local companies," she says. "My team was good at their jobs. What they didn't need is my telling them, 'You need to do it this way.' If something wasn't working, I'd eventually use my experience and say, 'How about if we do it like this?'" Through her team, Pill found one of 2049's most striking locations in an old tin factory. "I do a lot of research, trawling the internet, looking at architectural websites," she says. "I also went through my location team's libraries to see if there was anything interesting and to get ideas. That's where I first saw this wonderful space. One of the guys had an old photo of it. He didn't know where he got it. He just knew it was in this massive, abandoned, fenced-off building." One morning, Pill and one of her assistants set out to find it. "We spent a few hours searching," she remembers. "We had to go up abandoned staircases, and cross holey floors, which is not a good way to scout. Finally, we found the space in a basement. It was all concrete, and it was covered with 2-3 inches of water. It had fantastic concrete pyramids coming down from the ceiling, and high ground-level windows. It was a weird space, but Denis and Roger fell in love with it. Then we had to make it work, which was challenging, making it safe and secure. During filming, I remember standing on set and thinking, 'This is very beautiful. No one is going to think it's an actual location.' You have to have the tenacity to get what you want. It's wonderful when you present a location and see the creative types get really excited about it." In addition to her hands-on work in Hungary, Pill says, "Part of my role was to find a lot of the visual effects locations in other countries. Viewers won't notice, but visual effects needed aerial plates (footage from helicopters used as background for visual effects shots). Denis wanted a cloudy desert, which is the hardest kind of desert to find. Deserts with no vegetation usually means there is hardly any rain, which means there are hardly any clouds. He also wanted a desert in winter that would fit our production schedule. "I had a brain wave. I'd been to Iceland before, so I went to Denis and asked if it had to be a golden sand desert. He said, 'What are you thinking?' I showed him the deserts in Iceland, and we went for the black volcanic look. I spent five days in Iceland, two of which in a helicopter scouting the entire country. We ended up shooting the aerial plates there." Pill also worked closely with Los Angeles LM Robin Citrin, LMGI. "Robin looked after an aerial shoot for me at the Valley of Fire outside Las Vegas," she says. "We also needed a shot of the Vegas skyline, some shots in Lincolnshire and in the southern part of Spain, plus the favellas of Mexico City. With these faraway locations, I researched them and production sent small teams of people, but I didn't get to go." If possible, Pill, 46, would like to visit every location, no matter how obscure or difficult. That's one reason she loves her job so much. "I fell into location work," she says. "My background is art and photography. I went to Salisbury College of Art. Photography is my passion. After college, I decided to travel, which is my other passion. I was gone 1½ years." While she was away, Pill failed to settle on a career. "I wasn't grown-up enough to think about what I wanted to do," she says. "I was 24. I thought maybe I could work in the film industry, but it was all so unknown. I moved to London and rented a flat. I knew photography and travel would be in my world. "Some contemporaries of mine from college were working on a film in the New Forest, and they said, 'Why don't you apply to be a runner?' My photography course had done a bit of film and TV at the end, and I knew I was interested in the moving image. I also knew I was never going to be a camerawoman or technical person. I became a runner on The Woodlanders (1997, based on the Thomas Hardy novel). It was out in the woods. I'm not an office person. I grew up on a farm in Oxfordshire. Outdoors is my natural habitat. I don't mind standing, although not for 12 hours in the rain. I started out helping out in the production department. Then I did a couple other jobs as a runner (True Blue, Fever Pitch). After that, someone offered me an assistant Photo by Rankin © 2005 Eon Productions 30 • LMGI COMPASS | Fall 2017 Emma Pill