Working of lots of things right now. No time for a real post. Will try to do something tomorrow, maybe… Looking at dates and theatres for a New York City premiere (guess that’ll also be our World Premiere, too)… Working on the editing… No time even to add a photo to this post…
New York City seems to be revising their plans a bit regarding the whole film permits thing. After all, they are trying to bring people to the City to film, right? Isn’t that what their ”Made in NY” incentives are all about?
…Yep! To try to keep filmmakers here in New York, and away from the West Coast or the Frozen North!
When we lived in Toronto (we were doing theatre back then), there always seemed to be movies in production…just in our neighborhood alone! You could always tell when they tried to make the setting look like New York City. They’d put up a blue mailbox (in Canada, mailboxes are… red) and add graffiti all over the place. This was supposed to make you think the setting was New York. (But sometimes, if you look closely at these films, you might catch a glimpse of the CN Tower in the background!)
Last summer, we shot our feature film Liars and Lunatics in New York City. Queens, actually. Interestingly enough, there seem to be very few films shot in Queens. Did an internet search and here’s the list of movies…
Coming to America (1988), starring Eddie Murphy and Arscenio Hall (Hey, “Queens” is part of the whole premise. They better have shot some footage in Queens).
Spider-Man (2002) & Spider-Man 2 (2004), starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst (They shot some footage in Forest Hills)
Raising Helen (2004), starring Kate Hudson (Shot in Forest Hills, Woodside, and Sunnyside)
And that’s it… The results of our search on the subject.
Hey… so why don’t more movies shoot in Queens? Well, our biggest problem with shooting Liars and Lunatics in Queens came from a place called LaGuardia Airport. The faint drone of the aircrafts coming in for a landing, or taking off, became a familiar sound on our set. We’d have to pause more than a dozen times an hour for sound purposes alone.
Maybe that’s the answer to the question above. Queens just has too many airports–LaGuardia at the north end and JFK at the south end. But Queens is a big borough. Forest Hills seems to be kind of popular. Maybe they have less air disturbance in Forest Hills…
Or, maybe if we all went back to the silent movie era, we’d all be fine!
Indie Filmmakers are all up in arms over this. Apparently the City of New York is trying to require any group with a camera (i.e. more than two people) to have to get a permit and million-dollar liability for filming anywhere in New York City.
Hmmm… Have any of those guys who are for this regulation ever tried to get a filming permit in New York? Sure, the permits are free (that’s nice). But the million dollar liability. Now that’s gonna cost some money.
And… If you’ve been down there at the film office in Manhattan (and we were there about this time last year), you’ll find a lot of people sitting around, waiting. And then you find out that you have to go back the next day and… guess what? That’s right. Wait some more.
When we were there last year, we were on time for a scheduled meeting regarding our film Liars and Lunatics. But we had to wait at least a half-hour because the guy who was supposed to talk to us was busy with someone else.
When he finally made it into the room, the thing that he told us at is that they were really only concerned with our shooting locations conflicting with the locations of Law and Order. As long as we didn’t want to film at the same time and place as Law and Order, we had no problem.
Soooo… We had to wait all that time to find that out?
“Time is money, especially when you are talking to a lawyer or buying a commercial.” — Frank Dane
Or at least when your waiting to get your filming permits in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Film and Television.
Not to say it isn’t helpful to have permits. It saved us on one occasion. But that’s another story…
{{ photo :: Filming a scene from Liars and Lunatics in Queens… Notice the “I Love NY” shirt? Maybe they should start making “I Love Waiting in NY” t-shirts! }}
