I hate my neighbors. Film Making related!

[DjfunkmasterG]

Maryland is known for it's Rubber Necking. I think this state invented Rubber Necking. I can honestly say we never had anyone wreck because of us, but we did have a lot of people drive by and check things out.

[Mike]

Thats why I sometimes prefer shooting in a studio than on location, to avoid the distractions and anoyances that shooting in public gives. But at the same time that takes away the magic from shooting in a real location and as long as the rubber neckers don't cause to many distractions and are quiet while shooting is taking place, it isn't a problem.

[LouCipherr]

Maryland is known for it's Rubber Necking. I think this state invented Rubber Necking. I can honestly say we never had anyone wreck because of us, but we did have a lot of people drive by and check things out. yeah, and some of them parked right on the f*cking set and thought leaving their lights on and engine running was a good idea. Some people just have no common sense.

[DjfunkmasterG]

I should do a ZACK SNYDER and Rent a sound stage and Blue SCreen the whole ****ing thing and shoot Deadlands 2 via Chromakey.

[Mike]

I should do a ZACK SNYDER and Rent a sound stage and Blue SCreen the whole ****ing thing and shoot Deadlands 2 via Chromakey. hey why not! If you have the budget use what is available In all seriousness though, In my film we shot a scene in a studio and had a set constructed. it offered us so much flexibility in what shots we could take; if we wanted a certain shot we could just move a wall out of the way plus we had to rig a green screen for a special fx sequence so a studio was the most practical option for us. But that experience didn't compare to shooting in a real house and on a real street with gawking residents asking when the film will be cinemas Gawking residents can be extremly annoying if they continually disrupt a shot or become safety hazzards but they are also a lot fun to have around as it allows everyone to enjoy the experience of film making.

[Mutineer]

Most of the issues in this thread could be avoided with Scouting the locations in advance. Maybe consider ADR in the future (adapt). Must be nice to have entire city block locked off like the big boys.

[Danny]

what does scouting a location have to do with people?, if you scout a place out and theres no people how is that supposed to mean the place wont have lots of people when you go filming?

[MinionZombie]

In terms of knowing what 'you're in for', scouting a location is a good idea. You can't always do it, or there isn't time (which I've found), however I did do location scouting/shot blocking prior to shooting "my NIGHTMARE", and as a result, I knew exactly what I was in for (and where to shoot) for "Trapped" and both IAZM films.

[Mutineer]

It's tougher at our level (lo/no guerilla) but we can still scout, get permits, plan in advance. ADR as much as possible was once suggested to me; within reason of course

[MinionZombie]

Permits?! F*ck those! Well, depends on where I'm filming, I like to stay out of people's way and just go it guerilla, or if I'm elsewhere I ask nicely if I can "just get a few shots, we won't get in your way" and they're generally perfectly happy. In fact, the other week, I was working on this documentary I've talked about before, and we were getting an interview with this bloke and we were meeting at a pub and were looking for a good place to film, and one of the girls who worked there said they had a kind of 'hospitality room' type thing and said we could use it and that she'd put a sign on the door telling people to be quiet, so that was really nice. Nice room too. Obviously when I get around to working on larger scale stuff (and fictional-based stuff) then I'll seek out the permissions, but hopefully I'd have somebody to specifically do that so I can stay 'in the zone'.

[LouCipherr]

Did he just say "get permits"? Dj tried DESPERATELY to get filming permits for Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Anne Arundel County, and a few others i'm sure. You know what response we rc'vd from the Maryland Film Commission (who you would think would be willing to help low budget independent filmmakers!)? "Sorry, we only cater to films with at least a 10 million dollar budget" That was the bottom line of the conversation (correct me if i'm wrong Dj). So what did we do? That's right, we stole the shots we needed of the city. F*ck them. You're the state film commission and you won't even help the little guy? I guess you need to be Barry Levinson or John Waters to get a permit around here. *extends middle finger 'twards the film commission* Not to mention, the demands they had if you did get a permit were unreal. We would've needed a 10 mil budget to be able to pay the fire department, police, and structural engineers (we wanted to film in an abandoned firehouse/warehouse) that were REQUIRED to be on site by the film commission! How the f*ck do they expect a low budget operation like ours ($15,000) to be able to afford that? Oh yeah, they don't - and I think that was their whole point. Basically, when we filmed Deadlands, we were on our own. NO ONE would help, and the idea of 'scouting' a location was pretty much not possible. I mean, consider we used my house, my uncles house, a hall we rented, and the one street in Gaithersburg - which, I must admit, the people who run the city of Gaithersburg DID give us a permit and were VERY cool to us.... but that was one town out of the thousands in maryland - and NONE of which were cooperative no matter how much we tried to cater to them or how much we were willing to go out of our way to make it happen. Permits, on our level of filmmaking, you might as well consider them non-existent. At least around here where Dj and I live. LC

[Danny]

my idea of scouting is just spotting somewere whilst driving round, two good examples i discovered yesterday. a proper like 1000+ year old church from god knows what era built on the edge of a 10 foot high cliff over looking a village green, plus its near a moor and has floowlights, so looking up you see a cemetry full of old gothic gravestones with mist flowing around them and the floodlights from the other side of the church piecre the night and give the fog more visible form and that shines through a massive oak tree, totally impressive at night and you'd have to build all that in a studio if you were in hollywood but i jsut stumbled on a great set location to film, should i ever need to, and less than 2 miles from my house. the second one is 2 miles in the other direction (but only accesible by car ) an old abandoned farm route over an old rusty as fook metal bridge that looks like a little version of the golden ate bridge but without the big support towers, and surrounding it is 3 farms, 1 is abandoned but to be honest they all look dialpidated and 2 have shotgun wielding farmers in, now THAT requires scouting seriously i may get out to film soon now its finally getting sunny over here now and that area is great it used to be a town but it was just slowly abandoned, theres even like a bulletin board from the 60's thats all covered in moss and grime, that could be used ina zombie short as a way to show how "people havent been around for a long time", y'know give it that look of nature creeping back in. once again though those were jsut random findings, no scouting , no permits needed to my knowledge and better locations than in some flicks you'd see and all you gotta do is goes there with a camera and start filming.

[MinionZombie]

Ah geez, no-one under 10 mil? What a bunch of dil-lickers, you'd have thought they'd have some kind of help for indie productions, especially as it might inspire more filmmaking in the area, which could end up being a really good idea for the city, geez. Yeah, f*ck permits at this level, either nigh-on-impossible, or completely pointless ... you're best off putting on a friendly smile, a handshake and a very nice demeanour followed up with a side salad of greatfulness.

[LouCipherr]

That's what we tried to tell them, MZ - "This will do nothing but promote Baltimore, and as a result, you could get more business from other filmmakers if they like what they see in the shots" but nooooooooooooooo, that wasn't good enough for these pricks. ...you're best off putting on a friendly smile, a handshake and a very nice demeanour followed up with a side salad of greatfulness. Which is exactly what we did. Good advice. We had some trouble with the community association where we rented the hall for the shelter scenes. They rented the place to us, and we told them we were filming a movie, but not what KIND of movie. Well, they got wind of what the movie was about and almost cancelled our reservations. We assured the lady that we wouldn't be making noise after 11pm (we did, but no one cared - we were inside filming attack scenes, which wasn't too loud from the outside) and that we wouldn't have people dressed up in bloody rags walking the neighborhood. After days of reassurance to this lady by Dj, she finally gave in and let us film there. Once she saw how we worked that first weekend, she was really into the project, and people from the neighborhood got into it and even came down to watch us work. It turned out pretty to be a pretty damn cool situation all around. She even let us rent the place again like 2 or 3 times for pickup shots. As far as my neighborhood - none of our neighbors cared (most were really into it), and the one that might've cared, well.. we could've cared less if they complained. They never did, but it didn't matter to us one way or another. We weren't getting permits no matter what - the maryland film commission saw to that - and since we were filming on my property and only filming my house, they had no right to complain to begin with. Besides, we always cut off filming before midnight when we were in a residental neighborhood anyway, out of respect for neighbors. That seemed to be acceptable to them as we never had any issues.

[coma]

In NYC if you dont have a tripod and a small cast you can claim "Ametur film" and avoid a permit. Whip out the tripod and you might have a problem. As long as you dont have guns you can Guerilla away. But NYC is really friendly to all kinds and levels of filmmakers and they will work with you.