When you shoot overseas you cannot reproduce the systems, the processes, and the methods you use at home: you just have to understand how to make things happen in a different way. This doesn't mean that you just sit, wait, and pray for the production to go smoothly. It means that you have to understand "the local" methods and try to make them work for you. At times you discover that in the most remote areas of the Globe, a place with an incredibly limited production industry, they are able to achieve remarkable goals in a very unsuspected manner. Occasionally, on the other hand, you realize that it's the moment to teach something to improve the system. But you cannot pretend that shooting in the jungles of Guatemala is the same as shooting in downtown L.A.

The principal thing to understand is that, with the exclusion of a few cities worldwide, there are not many places with a supporting industry as the one we know in the US. That means that local production teams cannot count on a sophisticated structure to achieve their goals. They sometimes have to invest hours in solving problems that in L.A., New York, Miami or London could be solved with one single phone call. But if they are good, they can put together an extremely complex production with excellent results and, often, with a very limited amount of money.

I spent the last 27 years watching production teams in all the Continents organizing productions: I like to observe them, to understand how they proceed and how they work. I accept the local methods that are proving themselves efficient and, from time to time, I import them back home. When I realize that it is necessary, on the contrary, I ask the local production team to work as we are used to in the US. I explain why I believe that our systems are better in this case and why we should operate in this manner.

Only once have I had to fire the production team and start over: only once in so many years and it was in a country where I considered from the beginning it could happen.