There was a certain irony to Fritz Coleman hosting the 13th annual Location Managers Guild International Awards Saturday night at the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica. Coleman spent 40 years working at the same location — NBC Los Angeles — but on this night, the former KNBC weatherman was celebrating the people whose job it is to constantly search for the next great place to tell a story. Before a receptive crowd of roughly 400 location professionals, filmmakers, industry executives and press from around the world, Coleman paid tribute to what he called one of the entertainment industry’s most important and least recognized crafts. Location managers, he noted, do far more than find a building, street, desert or mountain that looks good on camera. They negotiate access, deal with communities and local authorities, navigate logistics and help filmmakers turn real-world places into essential components of a story. And despite the industry’s increasing reliance on virtual production and digital technology, Coleman stressed that technology isn’t going to eliminate the need for the professionals who find the real places. That message was particularly appropriate for an evening in which actual locations were, for once, the stars. The LMGI awards honor outstanding use of filming locations in motion pictures, television, commercials and other productions. This year’s winners underscored just how dramatically a location can shape a project, from the California landscapes of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” to the New York and Tokyo settings of “Marty Supreme” and the distinctive Southwestern terrain of Apple TV+’s “Pluribus.” The contemporary feature award went to Warner Bros.’ “One Battle After Another,” whose production utilized locations across California’s Humboldt County, Sacramento, Stockton, Eureka, Arcata and San Diego, as well as El Paso, Texas. The period feature prize went to A24’s “Marty Supreme,” filmed in New York City and the surrounding region, New Jersey and Tokyo. On the television side, “Pluribus” took the contemporary series award, with its locations spanning Albuquerque, New Mexico, Montana, Nevada and Spain. “Fallout” Season 2 won for period television after shooting in California’s Dumont Dunes, the Mojave Desert, Antelope Valley and Santa Clarita, while Netflix’s “Black Rabbit” was honored in the anthology/movie/limited-series category for its New York locations, including Brooklyn and Manhattan. The awards also went beyond scripted entertainment. Toyota Trucks’ “They Don’t Read Reviews” won for Outstanding Locations in a Commercial, while the Humboldt-Del Norte Film Commission was recognized for its work on “One Battle After Another.” One of the evening’s biggest moments came when four-time Emmy-winning writer, director and executive producer Vince Gilligan received the Eva Monley Award, named for the pioneering location scout and manager. Gilligan’s résumé — “The X-Files,” “Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul,” “El Camino” and “Pluribus” — is unusually intertwined with the power of place. “Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul” and “Pluribus” in particular have made extensive use of New Mexico, transforming Albuquerque and the surrounding landscape into something approaching a character in their own right. For Gilligan, location has been more than a production necessity. The barren landscapes, distinctive architecture and wide-open spaces of New Mexico have helped establish the visual language of the worlds he has created. “Pluribus” has taken that philosophy even further, expanding beyond New Mexico to Montana, Nevada and Spain. Location Manager Christian Díaz de Bedoya, who has collaborated with Gilligan on several major productions, presented the Eva Monley Award. The two have spent years traveling thousands of miles together in search of locations capable of becoming indelible parts of Gilligan’s storytelling. The production of “Pluribus” even required the construction of a custom seven-house cul-de-sac, while Díaz de Bedoya helped incorporate Paraguayan cultural details into the...