Written by Kianna Best on May 21, 2025. Posted in Interviews

Ask a Location Manager: The Production Designer Partnership

In the world of filmmaking, production design sets the tone, but it's the locations that ground the story in tangible reality. When those two elements work in harmony, magic happens on screen. For the debut of Ask a Location Manager, we explore this critical partnership through the eyes of two industry veterans: Christian McWilliams (Gladiator II, Kraven the Hunter) and Lori Balton (Top Gun: Maverick, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood).

It All Starts with a Vision

Location managers often enter the process even before the director is hired. According to Balton, “I’m frequently hired by the studio just to explore possibilities. The world is my oyster at that point.” Once the production designer comes on board, they become the first real creative partner, setting the visual direction that the location manager will help realise.

McWilliams echoes this: “The first description you get of what you’ve got to find usually comes from the production designer. You may meet them with the director, but they’re your first creative point of contact.”

Designers may arrive with a strong visual concept—or one still in flux. It’s the location manager’s job to interpret that idea into real-world spaces, asking key questions early: Are we prioritising look, geography, or budget? Will we build parts of the set? What has to be real?

“You’re not just looking for a cool-looking building,” says McWilliams. “You’re mentally placing the camera, anticipating the art department’s needs, and solving problems before they show up on a call sheet.”

From Creative Spark to On-the-Ground Reality

A designer might fall in love with a space that’s a logistical nightmare. Or a location might be perfect practically but miss the creative mark. That’s where negotiation comes in.

“My philosophy is always: give them things to reject as well as to accept,” says Balton. “You can’t find the perfect location without kissing a lot of frogs.”

Sometimes it’s a ceiling that’s too low or a floor that’s too modern. The challenge becomes: can we cheat an angle? Dress the space? Find an alternative nearby? These back-and-forth conversations are the core of the collaboration.

“You’re always looking for visually stunning places that are also workable,” McWilliams adds. “Directors want a forest? Great. Ideally one with a car park 100 meters away.”

The unspoken superpower of any great location manager is compromise. You learn which battles to fight, and which to let go. As McWilliams jokes, the vintage train station may be perfect visually—but it hasn’t had power since 1994.

Being prepared helps. Before meeting with a designer, McWilliams compiles mood boards and visual references, even from places the team hasn’t considered: “Even if they’ve never been to Morocco or Syria, I’ve got 17,000 images they can browse.”

Balton takes pride in challenging creative assumptions. “Designers will say, ‘We’ve seen that location a million times,’” she says. “And I’ll argue, ‘You haven’t seen it the way this director would shoot it.’ That confidence took years to build.”

Over time, location managers and designers develop a shorthand. They start anticipating each other’s needs. “Knowledge is cumulative,” says Balton, referencing her long partnership with production designer Jeannine Oppewall (Seabiscuit). “You learn from everyone and everything.”

Technology: A Double-Edged Sword

The pandemic accelerated the use of virtual tools like 360-degree video and live-streamed scouting, but neither Balton nor McWilliams sees it as a permanent substitute.

“We had scouts on iPhones doing 360 video Zooms with 30 people watching,” McWilliams recalls. “It worked—but I wouldn’t want it to be the norm.”

For Balton, real scouting is a deeply sensory experience. “We interpret landscapes for designers. There’s no substitute for being in a space—feeling it, hearing it, smelling it.”

Though the job involves a heavy dose of planning, it’s ultimately a creative pursuit. Whether scouting desert plains or downtown alleys, location managers are visual storytellers in their own right.

“People used to think we just parked trucks,” McWilliams says. “But now they know—we help build the world the audience escapes into.”

Balton agrees. “Filmmaking is a team sport. The landscape is part of the story. And we’re the ones who find it.”

When the partnership between location manager and production designer clicks, everything runs smoother. The storytelling feels seamless. And yes—everyone gets to go home a little earlier. And that, as McWilliams and Balton would both tell you, is the real dream.