Through the Eyes of a Location Scout
WITH SOME 30 YEARS OF INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE, LEAH SOKOLOWSKY DISCUSSES HER CREATIVE PROCESS AND THE EVER-CHANGING ROLE OF A LOCATION SCOUT
B Leah Sokolowsky, Location Managers Guild International Member
18 DESTINATION FILM GUIDE
ack when Leah Sokolowsky was growing up, her advertising creative director father would often take her on commercial shoots. It was during one of those outings at a ranch in Los Angeles that The A-Team just so happened to be shooting nearby. Sokolowsky was immediately smitten— with the shooting of a television show and not necessarily the A team itself— and once back home in Florida turned her attention towards a career in the film industry. “I got the bug, and it bit me hard,” she says. After an internship at the then new Palm Beach County
Film and Television Commission, she met the location manager of Miami Vice. It was Sokolowsky’s prowess with an Apple computer that got her hired. “She took me under her wing and the rest is history,” says Sokolowsky. Some 30 years and a ton of jobs later, Sokolowsky is still smitten with her career as a location scout and manager—whether it’s working on a large feature film project like Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday or the more recent The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Here, she offers scouting tips, lessons learned and her unique perspective on the role of a location scout today.
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