I posted above that my neighborhood in Brooklyn is frequently used for movie and television shoots.
My neighbors and I have noticed two new and disturbing trends.
First, crews routinely exceed their permits. They’ll get a permit for one street, one block long, but they’ll show up early in the morning and block off another block or two for parking of the crews’ cars and other vehicles. This extra space is definitely not included in the permits. And it’s getting noticed.
Second, shoots are starting to have *aggressive *security guards, who will insist that no pictures be taken, and will attempt to block people taking pictures. As you point out, this is illegal. They do it anyway.
Security guards have *never *been, and are not, necessary in this particular neighborhood (Brooklyn Heights, for the New Yorkers here). Seems like they’re onsite mostly to prevent pictures from being taken.
It’s starting to get noticed, and to get brought up in community board meetings. People are contacting their city council members.
It’s too bad. Brooklyn Heights has been host to many, many shoots, over decades. And it’s always worked pretty well. But the producers are starting to wear out their welcome. The bad actors are going to screw up a good thing for everyone.
I don’t know about NY, but in L.A. the “security guards” are often off-duty police moon-lighting, which might make them more “assertive.” Interestingly, they can’t use their police bike to do this work, so these guys actually buy their own bike to look like a police bike–but it’s a well paid gig.
In general, I’ve found that film and TV production tends to attract the most annoying people. I once worked in on-set sound recording for film but eventually couldn’t stand being around the other people so I stopped. The lunch breaks were the worst part. They weren’t able to have a real conversation. All they ever did was try to drop whatever name they could to indicate what famous person was on a production they’d worked on before.