{"id":25182,"date":"2017-07-31T12:02:04","date_gmt":"2017-07-31T19:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/locationmanagers.org\/?p=25182"},"modified":"2017-11-06T17:08:05","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T01:08:05","slug":"the-fate-of-the-furious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/locationmanagers.org\/es\/the-fate-of-the-furious\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fate of the Furious"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Featured in the Spring 2017 Issue | View Full Issue<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t

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Location manager Eric Hooge goes with the first American studio team ever to shoot in Cuba<\/h3>\n

by Nancy Mills<\/em><\/p>\n

The Fast and Furious franchise has shot in some pretty exotic locales. But nothing will top its adventures in Cuba for The Fate of the Furious<\/em>. Installment No. 8, about what happens when Vin Diesel\u2019s character, Dom, visits family in Havana and gets seduced into criminal activities, opened April 14.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\n

\u201cA lot of independents from other countries go to Cuba, but we were the first American studio ever to shoot there,\u201d says supervising location manager Eric Hooge, LMGI, 44. No wonder he felt like Christopher Columbus discovering the New World.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Producer) Michael Fottrell and I were sitting in a bungalow at Universal, just the two of us,\u201d Hooge recalls, \u201cwhen we got word that the studio wanted to shoot in Cuba. The Furious<\/i> films are a very international franchise now, and they always want to go somewhere amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The men, who had worked together on Furious 7<\/i>, \u201cbegan digging into it,\u201d Hooge says. \u201cWe had to start from scratch because there was nobody to call.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Michelle Rodriguez and Vin Diesel. Below: Cardenas Street. Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures.<\/p><\/div>\n

Back in the fall of 2015, when their research began, the U.S. embargo against Cuba, which had been in effect for more than 50 years, was still in place. \u201cI aligned myself with an advisor, Rich Klein, as I normally do when I go into countries that may need some political navigation,\u201d says Fottrell, who also produced 2003\u2019s 2 Fast 2 Furious<\/i> and 2009\u2019s Fast & Furiou<\/i>s. \u201cRich used to work in President Clinton\u2019s administration, but now he\u2019s in private practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe helped me navigate the D.C. waters. He can access information around the world, and he was integral at our end. We had no idea what we were doing, to be honest. Cuba is such a sanctioned place. The embargo is still in place, and it\u2019s technically still illegal to do business in Cuba. But despite those technicalities, you can get permission to do business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fottrell arranged for an OFAC license to do business in Cuba. \u201cWe also had to get a BICS license from the Department of Commerce,\u201d he says. \u201cThat allows you to export and import all your equipment. Everything you take to Cuba has to be itemized very clearly, especially communication devices.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met with Jesse Moore, Associate Director of Public Engagement at the White House, who was basically, President Obama\u2019s aide for the entertainment industry. We needed a lot of support because we had to push this through very quickly and get the license done so we could start shooting in April, before it got too hot.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also met with the Cuban Ambassador, Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00f3n Caba\u00f1as, who resides in the Cuban Embassy in D.C. And we got advice from their state department. The Cuban government has to want you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Hooge focused on the practicalities of working on the island. \u201cI called some small production services that have filmed in Cuba on a limited basis,\u201d he says. \u201cThey started vying to get our business because it would be huge.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used ITACA Films out of Mexico to interface directly with the Cuban government. On our level, the government entity we directly interfaced with the most was ICAIC (Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry). They would take our requests to different levels within the government.<\/p>\n

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Cardenas Street. Photo by Eric Hooge\/LMGI.<\/p><\/div>\n

The ICAIC team worked tirelessly and was the main entity assisting us in gaining our permissions,\u201d Cuban unit location manager Matt Prisk, LMGI adds. \u201cThey would attend meetings and deliver the request to upper government offices by hand with officially-stamped letters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily for Furious<\/i>, the political climate was improving for a Cuba shoot. \u201cObama began to relax relations with Cuba, and Americans were traveling there,\u201d Hooge says. \u201cIn November, four of us\u2014Adam McCarthy (Vice President of Physical Production at Universal), production designer Bill Brzeski, Michael and I\u2014decided to go into Cuba on \u2018professional research\u2019 visas.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo airlines were flying from the U.S. at the time, so we got a charter from Florida. A production services company took us around. Bill and I went to look at locations while Adam and Michael went off to look at logistics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to be sure we could do what we wanted to do and give the director (F. Gary Gray) some choices,\u201d Fottrell explains. \u201cWe wanted to shoot Havana for what it is. We also wanted to see the infrastructure and what we\u2019d have to bring in. It was great for the timing of Obama\u2019s agenda. Breaking the embargo was looked on as a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That initial trip opened the team\u2019s eyes to dozens of upcoming challenges. \u201cAfter leaving there, I could tell I was so na\u00efve about the language,\u201d Fortrell says. \u201cA lot of people spoke English but the older regime, which deals with the permits and the bureaucracy of it all, is all Spanish and Russian. I had to put a Spanish-speaking location team in place.\u201d He also decided not to bring in a second unit to shoot the action sequences. \u201cNinety percent of what we shot was the car race,\u201d he says. \u201cThe first unit can be just as good as an action unit, so we brought down an action unit director and shot for seven days. Then we segued to the principal actors.\u201d<\/p>\n

On that initial scout, Hooge and Brzeski spent much of their time canvassing for locations for the film\u2019s opening sequence\u2014a major car race through Havana. \u201cWe drove around for an hour and then decided to walk the streets,\u201d Hooge says. \u201cWe walked for miles and miles every day, just scouting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw wonderful colors on crumbling buildings. It\u2019s hard for the people to get anything fixed. Their buildings are falling down around them. Some have no running water, so they keep refilling water tanks on the roof. There are no elevators.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Malec\u00f3n esplanade at the mouth of Havana Harbor. Photo by Matt Prisk\/LMGI.<\/p><\/div>\n

Havana surprised Hooge. \u201cI was expecting a bigger Communist presence,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought there would be armed police or military and that the people would seem a little more depressed. I wouldn\u2019t say they were happy or sad, but they were super-friendly. I was also surprised to see a lot of technology. I think the country was getting the internet from Venezuela.\u00a0 Just about every young person there had a smartphone or an iPad. Relatives that are allowed to go back-and-forth bring in TVs. We were able to get an interesting perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brzeski credits the Cuban people with making their work easier. \u201cThey were so jazzed to make the movie happen there,\u201d he says. \u201cWe would have been lost without them. Local location assistant Paola Larramendi was particularly helpful. She guided us to many of our locations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost everything was shot outdoors, although Hooge notes, \u201cWe got some plate shots based on the interior of a building, but we then shot it onstage.\u201d<\/p>\n

During their preliminary visit, they realized that the Cuban government would be closely watching the production. \u201cEverything we said on a phone or typed into an internet browser would be monitored,\u201d Hooge says. \u201cCommunication is key to what we do. Being able to talk to the LM on a daily basis and by email is critical.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet, that often didn\u2019t happen. \u201cWithout the internet, it\u2019s so hard to send and receive visual material,\u201d says Brzeski, who found service sporadic. \u201cEven our cellphones weren\u2019t working.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Shooting The Fate of the Furious. Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures.<\/p><\/div>\n

With Cuba being just one of several locations for The Fate of the Furious<\/i>, Hooge couldn\u2019t spend all his time there. \u201cOnce I did the initial scouting and the director was happy, I hired Matt Prisk to go down and be location manager,\u201d he says. \u201cI needed someone who would dig in and be relentless and make it happen. That was an unbelievable task.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prisk brought KALM Miguel Tapia out of Atlanta in the beginning of February. \u201cMiguel was a great help, assisting in making the initial permits, additional scouting and setting up our support base camps,\u201d he says. \u201cThen he worked to prepare specific locations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prisk also began hiring and training a bilingual Cuban location team. Then at the beginning of April, KALM Alex Oyarbide, LMGI arrived from Los Angeles. He injected a sense of calm. \u201cIf the cellphone didn\u2019t work, it didn\u2019t work,\u201d Oyarbide says. \u201cWhat can you do? You have to adapt. It was a completely different pace in Cuba. It wasn\u2019t fast or furious.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all spoke Spanish,\u201d Prisk says of his team. \u201cI come from a Mexican-Italian family and was raised in a Spanish-speaking area of California in bilingual schools. At first, my Spanish was a little rusty but it improved rapidly. I made location deals and talked my way out of a few traffic tickets and basically lived a daily life in Cuba for four months. If needed, there were several translators. Miguel\u2019s family is from Puerto Rico, and he was raised bilingual. Alex spoke Spanish fluently in a Cuban dialect from his Cuban-American upbringing, and ALM Alejandro Uriegas\u2019 first language was Spanish, native from Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Cayo Las Brujas (Broom of the Witch). Photo by Eric Hooge\/LMGI<\/p><\/div>\n

Even if there were no language barrier, moving the unit around the city proved difficult. \u201cThe size of our trucks versus the size of their streets was a problem,\u201d Oyarbide says. \u201cThe Cuban government wanted us to go from point A to point B by caravan. I don\u2019t think they realized the amount of vehicles we were bringing. Imagine caravanning 30-plus vehicles through these little streets. We wanted to do it in bits and pieces, like we do here in the States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to find a way to get things done despite not having the same resources we were used to having,\u201d Prisk says. \u201cThis took planning and backup planning. There were no last-minute calls to our favorite vendors, but we created a system that worked for us.<\/p>\n

\u201cTime had to be allotted to get things done the most efficient way we could in the moment, and this could make for some long days for us. If the attachment wouldn\u2019t email, then someone would drive a thumb drive over. If the government requested 20 more permit books for the next day and the production printer was broken, we\u2019d find someone in town with a printer and hire them to print and bind books all night. There was no Fed Ex office.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Parque Mart\u00ed base camp. Photo by Eric Hooge\/LMGI.<\/p><\/div>\n

Instead of sweating, Prisk chose to be an optimist. \u201cThere were a lot of unknowns when we started, which made it exciting,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen Miguel and I got there at the beginning of February, some things were nailed down but we didn\u2019t always have full permission to film.<\/p>\n

\u201cEric and Bill, the production designer, had done a good amount of scouting, but we had more to do in order to put together what the director wanted. We were very scheduled in terms of what we could show. We had police and buses to host our scout. Then we took a big presentation around to different government authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furious<\/i> shot in Cuba between April 21 and May 5, mostly in Havana. \u201cFilming there was incredibly complicated,\u201d Hooge says. \u201cThey\u2019d never had a major production come in, so we were inventing the wheel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Cubans didn\u2019t have a permit process. Matt put together from scratch a book as big as a telephone book because of the demands of the government. The simplest little things had to go into the book. They gave us a timeline. \u2018If you don\u2019t have this done by this date, you\u2019re not going to have the location.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Making sure every government department knew what the others were doing was key. \u201cThe government was being very strict,\u201d Hooge says. \u201cIt was hard to work with them to invent a permit.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we chose locations, we had to figure out how logistically to keep the thousands of Cubans who wanted to watch from getting hurt. We created a very secure perimeter. Guys on trucks would jump out and put barricades up, and then we\u2019d put a police officer, a PA or a security guard to hold everything down. It was very complicated to put together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe book detailed every single day and every single thing we\u2019d do on that day,\u201d Prisk adds. \u201cBecause we were not able to bring all the people from L.A., we hired and trained locals. They learned fast and were really excited to be on the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were able to hire a security vendor, but some of the things we had to do in Cuba would normally have been done by vendors. We hired location assistants to carry around hair and makeup and all the pop-up tents. We hired others who had trucks. People weren\u2019t familiar with the needs of a large film crew, so it took a lot of time to make sure it went well.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn some days, we had a couple thousand people on set, when you count the police, the Cuban crew, the U.S. crew and the extras. Part of our prep was getting ready to support that many people. On some days, we had 200 PAs and 160 cops around the areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hooge moved back-and-forth between Furious<\/i> locations. \u201cI had Ian MacGregor in Iceland, and I felt very comfortable with him after the initial scouting. I knew he\u2019d get things done while I was bouncing between New York, Cleveland, Atlanta and Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\n

The SLM was involved with one sequence shot in the southeastern part of the country. \u201cIt\u2019s called Broom of the Witch,\u201d Hooge says. \u201cIt\u2019s like the Cuban Keys\u2014a big winding snake from the mainland out to a little resort island. I spent two days doing a second unit plate shot and a helicopter shot of a car driving along this road to the mainland.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also came out for a week before shooting to help the location team. I didn\u2019t have to do that, but I was there to be a utility knife.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Hooge found himself in charge of handing out water. \u201cCraft Services usually handles water distribution to the crew,\u201d he says. \u201cBut our Craft Services person was completely overwhelmed by the size of our crew. We had water stations, but it was hard for the crew to get to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe producers asked us if we could figure it out. I hired three able-bodied kids watching the shoot. We cleaned out trashcans, lined them and put in ice and water, and these kids became our own water boys. They\u2019d go out with water in their hands. There was a shortage of water on the island, so we had to be careful showing how much water we had. We couldn\u2019t flaunt it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hooge\u2019s down-to-earth approach to problem-solving has endeared him to Fottrell. \u201cI used to be a location manager,\u201d the producer says. \u201cThat\u2019s why Eric and I get along so well. He is a solid individual and looks out for a movie\u2019s best interests. He\u2019s very calm. When things start to go wrong, he doesn\u2019t get tightly wound and create a lot of drama for unnecessary reasons. He keeps his head down and focuses on the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cEric\u2019s creative. When he reads the script, he doesn\u2019t take it literally. Instead, he comes up with different ideas. \u2018Maybe it says \u201cwarehouse,\u201d but this other location could be more appealing,\u2019 he might say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before getting into location work, Hooge was a ski racer in Colorado. \u201cThe day I was done with my skiing career, I packed up my bags and went to L.A,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought it would be cool to be a stunt guy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took whatever jobs I could as PAs and ended up at a commercial production company. I constantly bugged the crap out of the location manager. Eventually, he made me his assistant and brought me into the Hollywood Teamsters 399 union in 1999. I had been doing nonunion commercials, and then the window opened up for commercials people to join the union. I did a stretch on TV shows and then feature films.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brzeski worked with Hooge on Furious 7<\/i>. \u201cEric\u2019s team is basically my team too,\u201d he says. \u201cWe came up with a strategy to work on the island using the assets of the local crews. We broke down the scenes into different areas of Havana that would represent what was going on in the scene we were going to shoot there. We raced cars all over the city!\u201d<\/p>\n

The car factor had a huge influence on local cooperation. \u201cThe Cubans\u2019 love of cars is something I have never found anywhere else in the world,\u201d Brzeski says. \u201cThey truly love our classic cars. It has become an obsession with them. Our movie\u2019s roots are about cars and racing, and the Cuban people love that in their souls.\u201d<\/p>\n

The production team brought the hero car with them and used local cars as background. \u201cWe put out a general casting call across the island for cars,\u201d Brzeski says. \u201cWe also held a party to find the best clubs in town for basic classic cars.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were very much involved in picking the color palette for each scene so we would not have repeats or all one color. We hired a Cuban car coordinator to help manage all this. The first day of shooting, I remember how many people showed up with each car to show them off. Entire families would come all packed into the car, and it turned into a large street party with music and food.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Left to right: Miguel Tapia, Eric Hooge, Alex Oyarbide and Matt Prisk.<\/p><\/div>\n

Filming the car race took nearly a week. \u201cMost of the Cuban part of the script is based on this particular race,\u201d Prisk says. The company zeroed in on the Malec\u00f3n, Havana\u2019s main thoroughfare. The road itself is five miles long and hugs the Havana coast. Locals and tourists like to congregate on its esplanade. Getting approval and then preparing the location was one of the production\u2019s great coups.<\/p>\n

Wanting access and getting access were two different things. \u201cThe government kept saying \u2018NO. It would cause too much chaos in the city,\u2019\u201d Hooge says. \u201cWe needed a mile-and-a-half lockup in the middle of Havana for the car chase. It would be like closing off a mile and a half of Wilshire Boulevard.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough it\u2019s more efficient to get the whole thing, we thought we\u2019d only get bits and pieces of it. I\u2019ve never seen a lockup that long. It was the equivalent of 28 city blocks, and we had to lock up all the side streets. This was in the middle of Havana, and we needed it for three days.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a big ask, but ultimately, they got a yes from an official known only as Leonardo, who was in charge of the Cuban National Police. \u201cLeonardo was the guy who made things happen,\u201d Hooge says. \u201cHe was the guy you didn\u2019t mess with. He was a tough, machismo guy. When people saw him coming, they either obeyed or else.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a big deal. He had power, and he wanted you to know he had power. You had to ask for permission.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeonardo would say \u2018NO,\u2019 and Matt would explain with respect the reasoning behind why we really needed something. Matt developed a really great relationship with him, and he came to trust Matt. Leonardo did us a favor and let us do this big chase sequence on the Malec\u00f3n.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prisk got to know Leonardo fairly well. \u201cMy assistants were assigned to different locations,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I would open all of the sets with different assistants each day. Leonardo was the constant for me from set to set. Very early in the morning, we would be the only ones out there in the dark setting up the closures. Sometimes he\u2019d be waiting there before I arrived.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was very dedicated to making sure everything worked out. Sometimes if I had a request, he would say, \u2018Let\u2019s go look at it.\u2019 It was a good feeling having him in the car while I was driving because I knew I wasn\u2019t going to be pulled over.\u201d<\/p>\n

One potential problem involved Cuban President Ra\u00fal Castro. \u201cRa\u00fal reached out to Karl Lagerfeld to do a Chanel runway event in Havana,\u201d Fottrell says. \u201cThey closed a section of the Malec\u00f3n, and I was worried about how we would work alongside them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a big challenge for our location team. The event was just one night, and we had to work around their lighting, their stages and their bleachers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Out of necessity, the Furious<\/i> team found another nearby spot to shoot. \u201cOn that day, we filmed a lot on Reina Street,\u201d Prisk says, \u201cand it ended up being amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flexibility seems to be the key to getting things done in Cuba. \u201cThere was no infrastructure in place,\u201d Hooge says. \u201cI never knew how much things would cost: the police, the permits, the road closures. I didn\u2019t know how to budget because I didn\u2019t know how they were coming up with the price. Somehow we ended up being on budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everything required special attention. Getting a helicopter approved for aerial shots \u201cwas a whole to-do,\u201d Hooge says.\u00a0 From Day One, we were told we weren\u2019t going to be able to bring an American helicopter into Cuban airspace, so we weren\u2019t going to be able to use our camera ship to film sequences. They also wouldn\u2019t let us use drones.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael and I talked about how we were going to get around this, and we suggested, \u2018Why don\u2019t we put one of your air force people in the helicopter? That way, you\u2019re in control, and you can monitor us.\u2019 After a lot of running around, they finally agreed to put in the head of their air force. That was monumental to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one of the first times a U.S. helicopter has ever flown in Cuban airspace,\u201d Fottrell adds. \u201cWhen the President goes to Cuba, they put the helicopter down there just in case he needs to be evacuated. Once they reassemble the rotors, the Cubans only let them turn it on to see if it operates properly, and then they shut it down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hooge remembers the Furious<\/i> helicopter\u2019s first official appearance. \u201cWe locked up the road, and here would come a very sophisticated camera ship, flying in low over the capitol building,\u201d he says. \u201cThe Cubans had never seen anything like it. They were crying and cheering.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 11 actual filming days of The Fate of the Furious<\/i> were the culmination of long and arduous planning. The initial scouting effort in November made it clear that anything the cast and crew might need would have to be brought into the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a cargo ship,\u201d Hooge says. \u201cWe had to build the manifests for the Cubans so they would know what we were bringing and for the U.S. government so they\u2019d know what we were sending. Everything we brought, we had to bring back.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a lot of stress. Departments had to provide detailed manifests. Once that ship sailed, anything that couldn\u2019t go on a flight, we weren\u2019t getting. Every few days, we had a runner coming from the U.S. with things like printer ink. You can\u2019t just go down to the corner store and get paper clips and pens.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen that ship docked and dropped its gates, it was like the storming of the beaches at Normandy. We had every giant truck you can imagine stuffed with equipment\u2014vans, 53-footers, camera trucks, the personnel vehicle. We brought everything and 300 crew members to go with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Portable bathrooms were also onboard. \u201cBecause Cuba doesn\u2019t have the kind of bathrooms we\u2019re used to, we brought some VIP restrooms,\u201d Hooge says, \u201calong with basic Andy Gump portas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toilet paper became an issue. \u201cThe Cubans have a hard time getting the simplest things,\u201d Hooge says. \u201cTake paint, for instance. If your house is blue and you need blue paint, they might not have it, so you take red paint because that\u2019s what\u2019s there.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Americans, we don\u2019t think about these things. At a restaurant restroom, you sit down and oops, there\u2019s no toilet paper.\u201d Hooge laughs. \u201cYou look up on the shelf, and there\u2019s a magazine with pages torn out of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one thing I remembered from our initial scouting experience. Cubans have a hard time getting toilet paper, so we brought pallets of it. But it would disappear. We had to hire people to stand outside the bathrooms and break off pieces for people. Otherwise, it would get stolen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keeping the location crew comfortable and as rested as possible was a prime concern. \u201cWe worked six days a week, often 12 to 14 hours a day,\u201d Oyarbide says. \u201cWe\u2019d start at 6 a.m. and end at 7 p.m. and sometimes have meetings until 9 p.m., just to get ahead and prep for the next day. I was the only one in my department to stay in a hotel: Memories Miramar Havana. It was easier for me if I had to go down to the office and work late.\u201d Others stayed in Airbnbs.<\/p>\n

Housing the entire crew turned out to be a major worry. \u201cEverything was booked because of tourism,\u201d Fottrell says. \u201cWe found a small cruise ship that had an infirmary and a kitchen so we could feed the crew. We figured out where it could dock, but as time progressed, the stabilization device went out, which meant the boat had to be dry-docked and would be out of service for three months.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen through our travel people, we found 200 rooms that had been booked by a Spanish travel agency. They didn\u2019t put down a deposit, so we cut in line a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding suitable base camps required diligence. \u201cOur main base camp was at the port,\u201d Prisk says. Parque Marti, an old stadium, was another, and we housed tons of our extras there. The third we called Dragoness because that was the street name.\u201d<\/p>\n

Making sure onlookers were safe fell to the location team. \u201cSome of the assistants and I would run up the stairs and tell people to get off rooftops when the helicopter was flying,\u201d Hooge says. \u201cHundreds would be watching filming. It was something to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could be dangerous just standing on the ground,\u201d Prisk says. \u201cRocks fell from buildings next to me twice. One was the size of a bowling ball. The police said, \u2018That\u2019s why we don\u2019t stand in gutters.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cOne night, we were putting some of our base camp stuff back in the fenced area. It was the night before our last shooting day, and a big storm came up. A window and window frame fell and exploded 15 feet from me. Rain was pounding my face, so the person who was helping me said, \u2018Let\u2019s go into this building,\u2019 which was a courthouse. Another window started shaking, and a tile fell off the roof and exploded.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went into an apartment to wait for the rain to stop, and a bunch of electrical wires were on the wall. I said, \u2018This is like one of those movies where someone\u2019s trying to kill me today!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Cuba is probably one of the safest places I\u2019ve ever visited. I think it\u2019s safer than L.A. I never felt I was going to be robbed or someone wanted to hurt me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a tremendous amount of respect for all those who were involved. It was more than just making a movie. It was a team effort between the Cuban government and crew and our U.S. crew to make this all happen. Everyone was very hard-working and dedicated to the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I was there, the Rolling Stones played and Obama visited. It was an experience I will remember for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s for sure!\u201d Brzeski says. \u201cWe had so many firsts on this movie\u2014from flying a helicopter down the middle of Havana to closing down entire neighborhoods for shooting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working in Cuba had a major impact on Oyarbide, who was born in the U.S. one month after his mother fled the island. \u201cI have family in Cuba that I\u2019d never met,\u201d he says. \u201cI had my first contact with my sister from my dad\u2019s side while we were shooting. I\u2019d seen her on Facebook, and we\u2019d talked on the phone. It was quite an emotional experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hooge\u2019s memories are more practical. \u201cI lost 15 pounds during production, and it probably took a year off my life. But it was great!\u201d<\/p>\n

CUBA LOCATION TEAM:<\/h3>\n

Supervising Location Manager:<\/i><\/b>
\nEric Hooge, LMGI<\/p>\n

Location Manager Cuba:<\/i><\/b>
\nMatt Prisk, LMGI<\/p>\n

Key Assistant Location Managers:<\/i><\/b>
\nMiguel Tapia, Alex Oyarbide, LMGI<\/p>\n

Assistant Location Manager:\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Alejandro Uriegas<\/p>\n

Location Assistants:\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Paola Larramendi, Roque Nunez, Ariel Montenegro,<\/p>\n

Alvaro Careaga, Liuba Esperon Otero<\/p>\n

Location Coordinator:\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Yussuan Rivero<\/p>\n

Location PAs:
\n<\/i><\/b>Magdelin Rojas Rosales,
\nCamila Lores<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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