New/Old Article (May 2017) about the MacGyver Location Manager Mac Gordon:
http://www.ozmagazine.com/single-post/2017...with-Mac-GordonIt's a long read, so I'll only post the most interesting bits concerning the locations in here. But head over to the source; there's photos as well!
Above the Line with Mac GordonChristine Bunish
A Conversation with Mac Gordon location manager for the CBS hit series, MacGyver.
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At press time Gordon was finishing season one of MacGyver, produced by CBS Television Studios and Lionsgate. (...)
Gordon took over as the show’s location manager with episode seven, heading “two teams of seasoned locations people who run episodes alternately.” Those teams include two key assistants, two assistant location managers, two full-time location scouts, a few PAs and an office coordinator. “I work on all of the episodes but I’m rarely on the set; I’m mostly in meetings or in the van with the producer, director, production designer and cameraman,” he explains. “Because of my experience in the area I’ll get ideas for locations and send scouts to check areas that I think will work. Or they’ll find locations on their own–our scouts are locals and very knowledgeable. Then I’ll ask the production designer and the producer what they think of the choices.”
Gordon’s two decades in the business means his expertise in “how shows need to function” is invaluable. “We’re basically schedule-driven. We crank out a new episode every seven or eight days while spending three days figuring out the locations and tech scouting for the next one. Things move fast; there’s not a lot of dilly-dally. You want to plan a reasonable number of moves for the company on any given day. We pair locations to minimize travel time, and we’ll factor in things like rush hour traffic or particular routes. It’s my job to keep the show moving forward with a minimum of disasters.”
Each episode of MacGyver spends an average of five days on location, Gordon estimates. The balance is spent at the show’s home studio, Mailing Avenue StageWorks. Located two miles from downtown Atlanta, the studio hosts interior shoots for MacGyver and houses its major standing sets and swing sets that are too difficult to shoot practically.
Getting Atlanta and its environs to double for locations around the world can be a challenge. “There’s not a tremendous depth of different looks here,” says Gordon. “Los Angeles, with its mountains and beaches, has more diversity in a 30-mile range. Atlanta is more consistent in its look. There are hills, beautiful forests and the city, of course, but it’s hard to play Afghanistan in Atlanta.”
MacGyver’s writers are mindful of that and have developed scripts that can be produced in Atlanta. “They don’t send us scripts for places that don’t exist here,” says Gordon. “No beaches, no Alpine vistas. We can do a lot of magic, but the more magic you need, the more it costs!”
Still, Gordon and his teams have found a bounty of locations to play the role of domestic and international locales. About an hour from their stages they found an isolated old barn and a horse farm. Just 20 miles west of Atlanta is the decommissioned Douglas County Jail, which has attracted several film and TV productions and which served as a Texas prison in MacGyver. An abandoned military administration office on an old US Army base doubled for the US embassy in Latvia. “The hard part was finding a building we could ‘destroy,’” says Gordon. “There was an explosion out front, machine gun fire and chaos. Special effects installed lots of breakable windows.”
Nevertheless, the sequence required digital visual effects to help sell the embassy’s destruction. “Locations that are augmented or modified in CG are picked because they work for the scene,” Gordon explains. “We scout for the directors and the story as much as we can; when necessary VFX steps in and works with the camera department” to round out the locations with digital wizardry.
The lobby of a Georgia State University building in downtown Atlanta served as a spot under surveillance in Shanghai. The show’s art department dressed the street outside with bicycles, small cars, vans and Chinese signage to make the location more exotic.
The top of an Atlanta parking structure was the site of a helicopter rescue in Kazakhstan. The plot called for an urban environment, so Gordon’s team chose a parking structure with “interesting old and new buildings in the background,” he says. When the chopper was shot down in a wooded area, the production didn’t have to travel far from the stage for an appropriate location. “About 300 yards from the studio is reclaimed land sitting idle,” Gordon reports.
Recurring locations are MacGyver’s house–a real residence adjacent to Buckhead–and the Phoenix Foundation headquarters shown in an establishing shot. The latter is the stunningly modern Porsche Experience Center and North American headquarters in Atlanta, a structure that looks great setting the scene for Phoenix in the storyline. But since it’s “in the airport flight path, it’s too noisy to shoot dialogue there,” says Gordon.
The hardest location to find was a stand in for Amsterdam for an episode where a bomb exploded in a van parked in an old part of the Dutch town. “We don’t see a lot of Amsterdam in Atlanta,” says Gordon. “We found a plaza in Marietta that we thought might work. The art department was amazing and added a ton of the right accoutrements–signage, European-looking kiosks. And later VFX added canals. But that one was tough for all the departments.”
The most difficult locations to secure on a continuing basis are, ironically, part of every urban landscape. “We have a standing order for nice buildings with lobbies for walk-and-talk shots,” says Gordon. “Lobbies are hard to find during the work week. Buildings don’t want all the disruption that goes along with TV production, so we have an ongoing search for them. This is true everywhere–you’ll find the same challenge in LA.”
Gordon believes that studio backlot locations could be “enormously helpful” for a show like MacGyver: “A generic European street would be fantastic for us. Maybe a classic New York City street, too; you can get close to New York, but you can’t find that same look,” he says. A courtroom or a modern prison–locations that are impractical to access in the real world–would also come in handy.
Gordon finds that Atlanta is still welcoming to location teams despite the surge in production in recent years. “Atlanta isn’t saturated to the point where people are mad at us,” he reports. “Most people are excited by the idea of being in a TV show, and it helps to have a show with name recognition, like MacGyver. But it’s always amazing how often we’ll knock on doors and people will tell us they’ve already been scouted or filmed by some other production.”
People also know the value of their properties these days. “Atlanta businesses are thriving,” says Gordon. “You’ll find restaurants hopping on a Tuesday night. If you want to buy them out for a location shoot the price has gone up considerably. They’ve figured out what the market will bear.”
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Gordon would like the permitting agencies to “better comprehend the demands of the TV side of the industry. TV moves so fast compared to features. Permitting is almost always in crisis mode since you need so much lead time to do anything remotely hard.
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There’s no doubt that cell phones, laptops, tablets and digital cameras have facilitated communications with those in the field and have put location databases at Gordon’s fingertips. But the process of getting out there and finding locations, securing them and coordinating the moves of the TV or film company has remained much the same over Gordon’s career. It’s still a people business.
Still, with all the incredible growth in Georgia’s production business, finding a qualified local locations crew can be difficult, according to Gordon. “I spend a fair amount of time training people. And it’s not the career path for everyone.” He hasn’t seen “a pipeline from film schools” to location management, although MacGyver did have a student intern on board for a while. “By and large it’s still a case of personal references: Somebody will suggest someone, they’ll come in, we’ll talk and I’ll give them a shot. Or not.”
So what are the qualities that make a successful location manager? “Patience, dedication, resourcefulness–and a good sense of direction never hurts,” Gordon laughs. “You have to think outside of the box. And you need to be incredibly diplomatic: We’re the gasket between the film/ TV world and the real world.”
A good location manager needs to read a script and get “a vision in your head” about the kind of locations that will serve the story while being practical in terms of travel, budget and schedule. “The greatest satisfaction comes in knowing that you’ve found the right location,” Gordon says. “A location that will look great on camera and advance the story but is shoot-able too. That’s what it’s all about.”
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Gordon is quick to assert that, “a location manager is only as good as his team. The people I work with make things happen and solve complex problems every single day. I’m just the guy who sends them into battle, although I try very hard to always have their backs. “My hat is off to everyone with ‘assistant’ in their location department title,” he declares. “They don’t get thanked a lot, they take a lot of crap and yet they persevere. They work miracles. That’s very admirable and proves to me every day what special people there are in our craft!”
Very pretty building!!! Like it! 
, you can buy MacGyver's reboot house (or at least the one they used to film the outside scenes; e.g. of them playing basketball in the S1 Pilot).
