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One day I got an opportunity to scout for bars for a commercial, and came back with 11 options for the producer client. After that, I spent some time as a location sitter (what’s now known as a site rep) and occasional scout for Cast Locations, a successful location service company still thriving in Los Angeles.
ROBERT PANZARELLA HOW TO
Fortunately for me, Fred Baron (credited as “location coordinator”) took a liking to me, and I learned a lot about how to be a location assistant without technically being one. Of course, back in those days, there was only one location manager, even on a big feature film, with NO assistants. For some reason, the UPM didn’t want to hire a DGA trainee, and when the DGA rep came around asking us what our positions were, we were instructed to say we were location assistants. I was hired as one of many production assistants. This madness went on for a couple of years, until I was finally able to get a job on a union show. My fellow PAs and I were paid very little, but were given motorhomes to drive. I even had a job throwing tumbleweeds at Neil Young all day long during additional photography for Human Highway. I worked as a production assistant, as a set builder (on The Beastmaster-indisputably a classic!), transportation coordinator (on Alligator), even as an electrician on something or other. My earliest jobs were nonunion, and not in locations … at least not officially.
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I enrolled at UC Santa Cruz and immersed myself in film studies.Īfter Santa Cruz, I moved to Los Angeles in search of film work. The first time I smelled eucalyptus and redwoods, I knew I’d made the right (only) choice for my new life. Many concerts later, I left New York for California, a surfer bound for the Pacific Ocean, trading the Fillmore East for Winterland. My cultural education continued under the tutelage of an older cousin, who took me to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium. He also took me into Manhattan when I was 8 for the premiere of The Longest Day, and I’ve been in love with movies ever since (I still have the program!). My father and I used to go out and drive around, looking at period houses and neighborhoods with an eye to what comprised superior craftsmanship and architectural style at an early age, I was already “scouting locations” without being aware of it. I think those exercises went a long way toward helping me know what to do when I read a script and how to go about finding the locations that were called for. I particularly remember the song about Officer Krupke.
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I remember him sitting me down to listen to the soundtrack of West Side Story and bidding me to visualize the scenes. I, however, was probably born to be one … receiving early training from my father without either of us knowing the job of location manager existed. Constant changes, whether with the schedule, the script or casting issues … if you’re not equipped to deal with the inevitability of change, you don’t want to be a location manager!
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That was one of the things we had to be prepared for … that, and change. Often, we worked with directors who’d want to see 50, even 100 houses … before eventually picking one of the first ones we’d shown. One day in the scout van, Adam said, “I don’t want you to think I’m a pushover, picking locations so quickly … you’re just that good at finding the right ones.” With few exceptions, they picked the first locations we looked at. Fortunately, we had a spectacular production designer (Patrice Vermette) and director (Adam McKay) who picked locations at a success rate I’d never seen before. It fell on us, with a stellar supporting cast of location scouts, to find all these elements and pull them together efficiently. On Vice, we had the wonderful opportunity to find seven countries and six states for a story that spanned six decades, in and around the zone, with a production team that had little experience working in Los Angeles and a relatively short prep schedule. My work partner, Leslie Thorson/LMGI, and I probably location managed more days in the city of Los Angeles on feature films than anyone. My final show was Vice, the biographical dramedy, starring Christian Bale as former US Vice President Dick Cheney, which finished in January 2018.