Employers: Movie studios, production companies

Openings: Start out as a production assistant and work your way

up

Salary Cap: Low six-figures

Number of Jobs: 1,000 to 1,300 in the U.S.

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As a feature-film location scout and manager, it's Burmeister's job to hunt down the places that match what's called for in a script and supervise the location crew during filming. The jungle scenes in Tropic Thunder were actually in Hawaii, while the Antarctica scene was filmed at a frozen lake in the mountains above Park City, Utah. And the desert outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, stood in for Earth in the year 2018 in both Terminator 3 and its upcoming sequel, Terminator Salvation, which Burmeister recently finished working on.

Burmeister says National Treasure's frozen lake was one of his all-time favorite finds because the place looked so otherworldly. "We took a four-wheel drive straight uphill for an hour," says Burmeister about getting to the remote lake, called Strawberry Reservoir. "When we got there it was minus 20 or 30 degrees, the air was thin and there were no trees or bushes." Voilà, instant tundra.

During more than two decades in the business, Burmeister has worked on pictures with some of the biggest directors in the business, including Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, James Cameron, and Michael Bay.

Once cameras are rolling, it's not unusual to find Burmeister and his crew on the set for 12 to 14 hours a day, supervising every aspect of being on a location, from previewing photos of scouted locations for producers and directors to setting up lunch tents for the cast. "It's time-consuming mentally and physically, and it's challenging, but it's never boring," Burmeister says.

For his efforts, Burmeister earns top scale of close to $2,500 a week, per Teamsters Local 399, which represents hundreds of Los Angeles-based location managers, scouts, and assistants. Location managers for TV movies, series, and commercials earn slightly less.

Travel is, of course, a big part of the job. This year, Burmeister has spent all of 35 nights at his home in Van Nuys, California. Otherwise, the 55-year-old bachelor's been on the road, including six months in New Mexico working on the Terminator film. He's staying on in New Mexico starting work on Transformers 2, the Michael Bay-directed sequel to the original summer 2007 blockbuster.

The Buffalo, New York, native moved to Los Angeles straight out of college to get into the movie business. After several years working odd jobs, he got his big break as a production assistant on a movie called A Boy's Life, from a then up-and-coming Steven Spielberg—the film was eventually renamed E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. After a couple more years, first as an assistant then head location manager on TV shows like Knight Rider and Matlock, Burmeister settled into features.

Despite his years in the business, Burmeister still gets excited to see the fruit of his labors onscreen and to see his name in the credits at the end of a film. "I took a girlfriend to Back to the Future II and they forgot to put my name in," Burmeister says. "It crushed me because it was my entrée into features."