When White Rock-raised Nicole Chartrand – location manager for the B.C. filmed Emmy Award-winning Amazon Prime series The Man In The High Castle – travels to Warner Bros. Burbank lot this weekend, it won’t be to scout a new filming site.
The Earl Marriott grad has been nominated for a Location Managers Guild Award for her work on the series – an alternate reality drama, set in 1962, based on the premise that the Axis Powers (Germany and Japan) had won the Second World War and divided the U.S. into two zones of occupation, with a lawless, neutral zone in the Rockies between them.
The fourth annual LMGI Awards – celebrating the best use of locations in 2016 – takes place this Saturday at the Steven J. Ross Theatre in Burbank and, whatever the result, Chartrand wouldn’t miss it.
She is nominated in the category of ‘period series’ – focusing on productions that celebrate the significance of locations as a“critical element of character development and storyline.”
In her nomination notification, Chartrand was told her name was included based on a vote by peers and is “a testament to yourreputation of excellence and your inspired work on The Man In The High Castle.”
“I’m very overwelmed with excitement,” Chartrand told Peace Arch News.
“It was a big surprise to me. I’m honoured to be nominated in the same category as shows the calibre of Game Of Thrones, Stranger Things, The Crown and Westworld. It’s a real honour to have our show recognized in this way.”
Now in its third season and newly available in Canada, the series stars Alexa Davalos, Rupert Evans, Luke Kleintank, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Rupert Sewell as Obergruppenfuhrer John Smith.
Based on a novel written by Philip K. Dick, and executive-produced by Ridley Scott, the series is rife with the internal conflicts of occupiers and occupied, all of whom are struggling to exist day to day within the constructs of authoritarian regimes.
At the same time, each of their lives are affected by the lingering forces of resistance, focused in the neutral zone and around the mysterious title figure, who seems to have been collecting newsreel films that show a very different outcome to the war – one in which, as in our reality, the Allied forces were the victors.
It’s an intriguing concept that creates many challenges for the production team, who must depict an imagined 1962 that still seems real, in spite of the alternate path of its history.
“There’s so much historical context that our society already understands, but we have to make sure the context of this rings true, otherwise it would seem unbelievable,” Chartrand noted. “It’s all part of the suspension of disbelief.
“I do believe that it’s in the details that you see the strength of a production. When the details are all in place, the big picture becomes clearer.”
Chartrand says her background and studies in the realm of theatrical design have given her an edge in her current assignment, in which she must research and identify B.C. locations that match the look created by production designer Drew Boughton and the story-telling goals of the series. It’s also her job to prepare the locations rigorously so that no modern elements intrude, and manage them throughout the construction, filming and clean-up process.
“It can be as small a thing as changing out light switch plates, or painting out curbstones and crosswalks,” she said.
At the same time, it’s a creative challenge to find locations that fit the distinct regions of the
continuing story, from the Nazi-authoritarian architecture of the East Coast, to the looser Japanese/Western mix of the West Coast (in which North American artifacts are collected and cherished as exotica) and the neutral zone, which Chartrand characterizes as a “lawless Wild West area, but one that’s been frozen around 1942.”
Chartrand and her team have managed to find many suitable locations around the Lower Mainland, from Chinatown, Gastown and thedowntown core, to Richmond, North Vancouver and West Vancouver, and Burnaby and New Westminster, she said.
“You really have to have an aesthetic eye,” she said.
Chartrand’s ‘eye’ was apparent early on as a student in the theatrical program at Earl Marriott with instructors Rick Harmonand Candace Radcliffe.
While she was completing a diploma in stagecraft at Douglas College, and later studying for her BFA in Theatrical Design atUBC, she returned to Marriott several times to design such outstanding school shows as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Guysand Dolls, Ash Girl and Beauty and the Beast – and latterly, for Harmon and Radcliffe, was designer of the debut show forBeach House Theatre in 2012, a restaging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Even while attending college, Chartrand (whose minor was in film studies) was gaining a firm foothold in the film and television industry, starting as a production assistant, but soon working her way up through Director’s Guild of Canada ranks to become an assistant location manager for the series Psych.
She’s not the only Chartrand in the business – her younger brother Russel, also an actor, is a scenic carpenter – while she credits their mom Wendy Long and dad Gilbert Chartrand with encouraging them both to pursue careers in the arts.
After some 13 years in the industry, she has more than 17 film and television productions to her credit – with a personal goal of becoming a production manager and, ultimately, a producer.
But she said she’s thriving on the challenges of her current assignment and is grateful for the encouragement and mentorship of executive producer Richard Heus, executive producer/director Daniel Percival, local producer Erin Smith, and production manager Yvonne Melville.
“I’m so lucky,” she said. “I’m very involved and having fun. I’ve realized that this is a very good fit for me.”