“Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.”
–DOROTHY PARKER
How lucky are we to work in an industry built on imagination—one that rewards the unique way we visualize and process the world around us. How lucky are we to have built a community bound by shared superpowers, dedicated to taming our wild minds with actual marketable skills.
This issue is crafted in the spirit of creative inspiration: celebrating what we do and how, by connecting with each other, we learn to do it better.
In “Going Off Script: When Locations Shape the Story,” writer Chris Evans talks to location professionals whose trained eyes look past literal descriptions on the page to find spaces that capture the emotional truth of a story that influences everything from character to action. LM Andrea Keener/LMGI reflects on universal life lessons learned far from home in “Lessons From Kurdistan,” and LM John Lucas/LMGI finds cinematic potential in a small New Mexico desert town in “Into the Hinterlands: Building Eddington in Truth or Consequences.”
“In the News” tracks a whirlwind international tour of events that expand and strengthen our community: California’s COLAs, Focus in London, the LMGI’s debut at SXSW, a London panel with a Royal Television Society and our annual “Locations Behind the Oscars” panels—plus a Fam Tour to Stockholm, the results of the LMGI Board elections that named a new President, Oklahoma Film & Music Day, Atlanta’s first “Huddle” event and details on the Guild’s new membership tier pricing.
LM Markus Bensch/LMGI closes things out with a mind-bending image of Stockholm’s Solna Centrum Metro Station in this issue’s “Martini Shot.”
The LMGI Award submissions period gave the Awards Committee the opportunity to do a deep dive into where everything is filmed and why—all in preparation for the 13th Annual LMGI Awards gala on August 22 in Los Angeles. Every submission is a testament to the passion and craft we bring to our work. How lucky are we to celebrate each other this way!
Until next time,
Stevie Nelson, Diane Friedman, Paul Messana, Edward Mazurek, Dodd Vickers and JJ Levine