My former office in Chicago was used in one of the Transformers films. Quite a pain to get there on a Sunday afternoon.
I’ve run into plenty of TV shows filming as well since I work night shift. You may have heard of some guy that used to be on Empire, that was frequently filmed around Washington and Wells in Chicago.
As mentioned in the other thread, I had occasion to walk through the crew setting up stuff for The Sense of an Ending locally. They’d taken over a storefront and dressed it as the location. Since it’s a fairly busy North London street. they couldn’t close it entirely, so they resorted to a set of signs stating that if you walked along that stretch of pavement you might be liable to be included in the film. Which I did and wasn’t.
The movie Promised Land filmed close to our home. They wanted to use a friend’s farm market for some scenes, and approached them to see if they could use their market for (IIRC) 9 days. My friends were all excited but didn’t want to lose money in the deal, so they researched how much cash it would take to close down for ten days.
When the movie guy came to discuss things, they were thinking that if they could convince them to pay $3,000 they’d bet set. It turns out his offer was way more than that, plus they would do some remodeling before and after the shoot.
spoiler for Promised Land
It was a lousy movie.
Similar to kayaker’s story:
There’s a TV series filming around here. They took over the house belonging to my BIL/SIL for a spell. Two full days of filming, plus setup time and doing some serious redecorating of the inside. Total payment made was $7000.
Particularly nice for them as they weren’t actually living there; they had moved a few months earlier and hadn’t figured out what to do with the property. So pretty much free money, plus an updated coat of paint/wallpaper for when they do decide to rent it out or sell it. Pretty good deal if you ask me.
(Not so nice for some of the neighbors though, who had to deal with a closed street and mega traffic in the area without (AFAIK) any compensation. But for my relatives it was great.)
I’m gonna guess they couldn’t do that today without making sure every damn citizen of the city knew what was happening.
Bumping this thread as a reminder: The Hawaii Five-0 episode they filmed on the grounds of our condominium complex here in Waikiki will air this Friday night, October 18. If you want to see where Siam Sam lives, then tune in. Some sort of abduction scene.
That movie’s actually pretty good, although really, it was made-for-TV.
I used to work at a hospital that, before I worked there, had a medical serial killer, and Discovery Channel or some similar station, back in the day, did a program about him. It included a lot of B-roll from our town, as well as shots of the home where he lived at the time, and the indoor shots were filmed at the hospital’s satellite campus, which except for the inpatient psychiatric wards upstairs was pretty much deserted on the weekends. I knew nothing about this until I saw it.
I grew up in Des Moines, and in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a company that made low-budget Christian-oriented movies that usually filmed in the Des Moines area. They would always say when and where they were shooting.
Signs just went up yesterday afternoon; someone will be filming around the corner in the next day or 3. I was driving, so I couldn’t see which show. If I remember, I’ll check later.
A few months ago, a film crew was using the hotel I was staying at for a film shoot. Evidently, this is pretty common; the hotel as built in the 50s and still has the vintage style rooms. They knocked on the door one morning and asked to move my car, since it was going to be in the shot. I ended up hanging out with them as they shot the scene (it was a short movie, supposedly for Netflix, called “Hangry”). Kind of fun. I talked a little with the lead actress (I didn’t get her last name, but her first was “Crystal”), watched as they taught her how to peel out, and just watched and chatted a bit.
Last Spring while vacationing in New Orleans we were able to watch some scenes of NCIS New Orleans being filmed.
I got the impression from the “crowd handlers” that they didn’t have the authority to tell you where you could and could not go. They more or less pleaded and nicely requested that people back out of a shot. Some vehicles and pedestrians would ignore them and head down the street or whatever and they’d have to delay the scene until the area cleared.
I watched Scott Bakula run down the street doing multiple takes of chasing the bad guys. On about the 5th take I could see by the expression on his face that he was hoping the director was satisfied.
Between takes the actors and staff would stand around taking/giving instructions and observers would walk up and take pictures. On this day at least the observers were polite enough not to crowd or interrupt the staff and performers.
My wife and I were standing on the sidewalk between takes when a man came out of a doorway behind her said,“excuse me”. As he walked past us we noticed his shirt had 3 bullet holes and blood spatter.
Immediately following him was an attractive blond woman and Scott Bakula both politely smiling and nodding at the onlookers as they headed over to the next shot.
We watched the scene with the blond woman the “dead guy” and Bakula in an episode 4 weeks later.
I rented a car to a fly-by-night film operation. Bad mistake. They purposely abused it, and it seemingly had nothing to do with the film.
I got it back and was a little pissed. They left a bunch of props in the trunk and called me later saying they needed them for re-shoots and stuff. I said, “Yeah, come get them. And we are gonna talk about what you did to the car.”
Never heard back from them. :rolleyes:
I still drive that car. Good car.
On a run this morning past Harvard Yard I passed through a film crew. They had set up sandwich boards on the sidewalks informing pedestrians that they were entering a movie set and by doing so consented to having their image show up in the background of the movie. I think that’s what it said, I was running so didn’t read the whole thing. I’ve already forgotten the name of the movie listed.
The show is “For Life”, of which I’ve never heard. Though sometimes shows use pseudonyms. Notably, “Shades of Blue” with Jennifer Lopez did not advertise itself as such, instead listing the show as “Lilies”.
That show used to be one of my wife’s and my guilty pleasures. When we visited, we had no idea what a deathtrap the island was! never seen another show where the characters are so blasé after killing multiple folk, “Anyone up for a beer?” 
Go Hilltoppers? 
There was evidence of a ton of shoots when I worked downtown near the el tracks. Batman was there for a while - but most shooting was at night.
The oddest I experienced was 25-ish yrs ago in a very pedestrian suburb W of Chicago - Lombard. They were filming a scene for a MOTW - IIRC, starring Ken Olin, about a Boston doctor who killed his wife.
As I recall, the scene was simply the cops breaking down the front door. For whatever reason, they chose a very nondescript ranch home about a block from our house. It was the middle of summer, but they sprayed foam to look like snow. We never saw any action - just a lot of standing around. Just seemed weird that they would pick this nondescript house in a nondescript suburb…
The scene at our condo complex was about 40 minutes in. When the cop cars converge (in our condo parking lot) and get their butts kicked by the girl in our condo lobby. And comes out of our Building A’s elevator with the guy. That really is our condo office you see her inside.
Just to mention, Hawaii Five-0 will be back filming all day this Tuesday, but just on the street this time, not in our condo complex. The scene will be shown on the February 7 episode.
This whole area in Waikiki is favored by the production, as crew and many of the actors stay just a block away at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. But at the end of this past Friday night’s episode, some of the characters ended up at Hy’s Steakhouse, on the other end of Waikiki. I’ve mentioned Hy’s before, in the thread for expensive meals, as the wife and I celebrated our 25th anniversary there in June, with the final bill including tip topping $400.
They filmed a high school movie at my high school. Not disruptive as they filmed the school scenes after school hours and on weekends, but you’d see little things they did to dress the school grounds during the day as they didn’t take it all down between shooting days.
They are currently filming scenes for the next season of Fargo in my town. Looks like it will be set in the 50s/early 60s judging by the cars.
Praise Jebus!
I worked at a research laboratory located in the corner of a marina (Kewalo Basin) near Waikiki, 1980-1984. One day there was a shoot for Magnum P. I. set at the marina, c. 1983.
I didn’t stick my head out of the lab to see the festivities, but a lot of the other staff did (mostly student interns and volunteers), so our work was disrupted because of that.
After the shoot, the crew passed out autographed photos of Tom Selleck.
It was noted that one of our associate directors at the lab looked a lot like him.