No Snow, No Cell Service, No Problem: “The Last Frontier” Location Manager Michèle St-Arnaud on Making Apple TV’s Wilderness Thriller
For location manager Michèle St-Arnaud, Apple TV’s espionage thriller The Last Frontier is her swan song. The Montreal native is bringing to a close a remarkable four-decade career defined by her collaborations with top-tier directors, including John Crowley, Paul McGuigan, Roland Emmerich, David Fincher, and Denis Villeneuve. “In French, we say le chant du cynge,” she says with a smile. “I’m still in the business in other ways, but I’m no longer a location manager. I discovered good friends on this show, and we’re keeping in contact.” In fact, she tells The Credits that the locations team planned a reunion to screen the premiere.
What they’ll most likely reminisce about are the challenges of shooting in Canada’s harsh conditions, hunting for dozens of practical locations to match the ambitious story demands, none more critical than the fiery plane crash that kicks off the series. “The pilot was all about the plane crash,” she says. “We wanted to find this stunning location to build this whole plane structure in the middle of nowhere. We found the crash site about 45 minutes away in Montreal, which allowed everybody to film at night.” While any plane crash is devastating, this story comes with a deadly twist. The passengers are hardened criminals who, while trying to escape, turn a peaceful Alaskan town upside down. Tasked with restoring peace is U.S. Marshall Frank Remnick (Jason Clarke), who teams up with CIA officer Sidney Scofield (Haley Bennett), to unravel the mystery behind what’s really going on.
With Montreal and the surrounding areas standing in for Alaska, St-Arnaud sought locations with scope and an Alaskan wilderness vibe. The Laurentides forest north of Montreal was a key location, along with locations in Quebec City, Calgary, Alberta’s Canadian Rockies, and Montreal. Before production began, the 2023 labor strikes impacted initial plans. “When the strike was over, everything in our schedule changed. We had to go with the weather. We were to do all stage work before going out on location, but now it was the other way around,” she recalls. “So we had to really rush to recreate this micro society and bring this entire infrastructure to these places, some didn’t even have cell phone communication.” Adding to the task was the lack of snow in some areas due to El Niño conditions. For added effect, production brought in snow machines and snow cannons to each location until production wrapped.
“At one point, we had multiple crews shooting at the same time—the main unit, second unit, stunt units, and visual effects units. We were up to 700 crew,” she says. “When we were running out of snow, we decided to move to a distant location. So we moved the whole crew about four hours north of Quebec City to this university that was shut down for the winter. We had to open all the roads to get inside the park and lodge everybody there. We didn’t have any electricity, so during night shoots we brought in generators to light up base camp. We were really in the wilderness.”
Guiding the look was production designer David Sandefur (Away, The Recruit). “David was already familiar with Alaska. He had been there with his family, so he really knew how to make winter a character in our show,” says St-Arnaud. While plenty of sequences show characters trucking through snowy wilderness, one convict, played by Clifton Collins Jr., is on a hunt to find a secret satellite communications center. Locations connected with a practical facility for the scene. “They played well with us,” she notes. “We had big safety issues where we could not walk in some places, and we had to take a crash course in how radio waves work to make it safe for everyone to work. But the location looked just as great on screen as it looked in reality.”
Another key location was needed for the climactic finale. St-Arnaud found a city water plant, which was later enhanced by visual effects. Additional stage work mapped all the action in the sequence. “Ever since 9-11, all the water facilities in town were sort of locked up for security measures. But we got to open this water plant, and we were the first to shoot there. They collaborated really nicely with us, too,” she recalls.
From the way it sounds, the location manager seems to have wrapped up her career on a positive note. Or as the French might say, très bien fait.
The Last Frontier is now streaming on Apple TV.
Featured image: Jason Clarke and Haley Bennett in “The Last Frontier,” now streaming on Apple TV.
