Shooting New York City

Image: Elevated platform on the corner of Broadway and 125th Street

As anyone who goes to the movies regularly, or who watches even a modest amount of television will tell you – New York City is a favourite location for movie directors everywhere. In America, Los Angeles is the only other city that probably comes close to New York – and maybe even surpasses it as a movie location. I’m musing about this today, because yesterday, I happened upon two separate film locations during my rambles around Manhattan.

I spotted the first movie shoot as a rode the M4 bus from Washington Heights down to Harlem. I was bussing it because I knew the M4 passed alongside a massive elevated railway platform for the 1 (One) Train which surfaces from its subterranean depths between 135th Street and 122nd Street (see image above). By the time the train passes over 125th Street it is probably six floors above street level, and I wanted to take some photographs of the massive steel structure towering high over pedestrians, motor vehicles and shops on the street.

Image: Film crew playing the ‘waiting game’ on location in New York City

Folks, if you want to know why modern movies cost 200 or 300 million dollars to make, it’s because dozens of crew members, and acting ‘extras’ literally sit around for hour after hour waiting for the shot to be set up, the sun to come out (or go behind a cloud), the rain to stop, or any one of a thousand other reasons before the director calls, “Action”.

I stood around for over an hour waiting to see what would take place, and just when I thought I might as well move on, I noticed a buzz of activity as walkie-talkie’s crackled into life, and things began to happen. The chase car moved into place. A stunt man mounted his bicycle, and a dozen or so vehicles which had been parked by the curb, suddenly roared into life; swung into position; paused for a moment like Formula 1 cars on a starting grid; and as the director called ‘Action’ the chase scene got underway – and was over before I had time to focus my camera!

I hate to think how many thousands of dollars were expended during the 90 minutes I had been hanging around on the edge of the shoot, let alone during the hours the crew must have been on location. I’m sure the chase scene will look great in the final movie, but quite frankly, standing around watching movies being made is pretty dull when all is said and done.

Image: Film crew setting up under elevated railway on Broadway, New York City

Of course you want to know what the movie is called, and who the lead actors are. All the crew woman I spoke to told me was that it was called Premium Rush. However, a 15 second search on the Internet Movie Database provided the following information: Directed by David Koepp, Premium Rush is described as "An action story set in New York City, where a bike messenger picks up a package at Columbia University and subsequently catches the attention of a dirty cop."

Aha. That explains the 20 second chase sequence between a camera car and the stunt man on the bicycle.

Image: Camera car rigged for chase sequence on Broadway, New York City

Just for the record, the film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt (currently appearing with Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception), and Jamie Chung (who despite the masculine sounding name is female, and who seems to have done mostly television but is now branching out into feature length movies). Maybe it's just me, but from time to time Gordon-Levitt bears an uncanny resemblance to the late Heath Ledger!

Later in the day, I was heading towards the South Street Seaport and saw three or four film company semi-trailers parked off Broad Street, with a couple of crew members setting up a lighting rig for an evening shoot.

As usual, you can find information online about daily shooting schedules and locations for movies and television shows being filmed around New York. The best site for I have found for that is the On Location Vacations website here…

New York Promenade

Image: The Cloisters commanding the best views, high over the Hudson River

~ Went out in the early evening for a walk up Cabrini Boulevard towards the Cloisters, which is only ten minutes from the apartment I’m staying at. The Cloisters is the branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the art and architecture of the European Middle Ages, and is located in Fort Tryon Park near the northern tip of Manhattan.

By the time I reached the park the building itself was closed, but the park was alive with activity. I quickly realised I was walking into a typical New York summer night. While it may seem like a movie cliché, to me it was everything I expected to see on a hot summer evening. Given that the vast majority of residents on Manhattan live in apartments, very few have access to anything resembling a garden or private yard. This means that in the evenings they spill out onto the streets and into neighbourhood parks (of which there are more than you might expect).

Tryon Park had its fair share of picnicking families, strolling couples and joggers, dog walkers and book readers, and bird watchers and sunbathers. Several paths afforded great views of the Hudson River, which were spoilt only by the fact that you had to squint into the lowering sun to see anything.

A large children’s playground is located at the corner of Riverside Drive and Broadway, and this was packed with families: adults, teenagers, children and grandparents. Streams of water were spraying high into the air in one central play area and young kids squealed with delight as they ran through the mist and showers of cooling water. Ice cream vendors with small three wheeled carts walked around the area plying their wares, and Latin music boomed from passing cars.

I sat for a while enjoying a $1 cup of ice cream, before deciding to walk to the end of Manhattan. Not the bottom end of the island, you understand, but the top – or northern – end, which was less than a mile away.

That iconic thoroughfare, Broadway, runs from the southern end of Manhattan up through its centre and continues on way beyond the end of the island. It is my wish to walk the entire length of the Manhattan section of Broadway, but now that I am here experiencing for myself that much talked about New York summer humidity, I will have to adjust my goals and complete the task in stages rather than one long walk. I have nothing to prove (apart from my stupidity) by walking 22 kilometres in 95 degree heat and 80 percent humidity – and the last time I looked, I wasn’t that stupid!

Image: Evening view of the Bronx over the Harlem River
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Anyway, since it was close, I set off to walk to the end of Manhattan, and I was happy I did. Along the way I passed Dyckman Farmhouse, a Dutch Colonial style farmhouse built by William Dyckman in 1784 (or thereabouts). The Farmhouse is an extraordinary reminder of earlier Manhattan and an important part of its Inwood neighbourhood. It was of course, also closed, but I will certainly return for a good look before I leave New York.

At the corner of Isham Street and Broadway stands the Church of The Good Shephard. In the garden on the Isham Street is a steel cross similar to the better known 20 foot high (6.1 m) cross salvaged from the rubble of the World Trade Center. Though much small in size, this blackened cross and the memorial garden it watches over is a poignant reminder of that terrible day. Wherever you go in New York City you will find memorials, large and small, to the thousands of victims of that terrible event, which – as you might expect – continues to have a huge impact on the lives of all New Yorkers.

Continuing along Broadway, I soon came to that narrow body of water which separates Manhattan from the Bronx. The Harlem River is spanned by the Broadway Bridge, which may be unique in that if it needs to be raised for small ships or other craft to pass beneath, it rises parallel to the water, as one long platform. Having walked across the bridge to the Bronx – and mainland America – I began my return walk back to the apartment.

Image: Iconic New York street scene, still encountered today
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Somewhere up a side street in Inwood, I encountered another image I associate with New York: someone had turned on a fire hydrant just enough to send a curtain of water cascading across the road so that local children could play in the shower of ‘rain’ it created.

It would have made a lovely picture. Just the same, it was a great way to end my evening promenade through the top end of Manhattan.

Training For Travel

~ For the past month or two I have been in training for travel.

Health professionals, and national health authorities constantly encourage people in first world countries to eat well, drink less alcohol, exercise regularly, and in the case of smokers, to give up the habit completely. Thankfully, I have never been a smoker and I’m only an occasional drinker, but at 110 kilograms (240 pounds) I can afford to lose some weight and not miss it.

The hard part is motivating myself to get up off the couch – or more to the point, to tear myself away from the computer – and find some type of exercise that will help me shed some weight and get a lot fitter.

My biggest problem is – I hate exercise. I get no pleasure at all from pumping iron at a gym, sweating profusely in an aerobics class, or sitting on a stationary bike pretending I’m in the pelaton at the Tour de France. As for running on a treadmill, all that conjures up for me are images of mice racing headlong on running wheels, getting nowhere fast.

As I say, I need something special to motivate me to get up and move. For me, this motivating factor has become travel. It is just the incentive I need to get fit or die trying!

Since travel tends to involve a lot of walking, I’ve settled on walking as the best low impact way of preparing myself for my next round of jet-setting. So every day, I head off to walk one of three circuits I have mapped out around my neighbourhood and along the foreshore between Semaphore and Largs Bay.

The three circuits involve distances of three kilometres (1.86 miles); five kilometres (3.10 miles); and eight kilometres (4.97 miles). How far I walk on a particular day, will depend on how I am feeling, but more and more I am walking the longer distance of eight kilometres. In fact, after a couple of months of regular walking, I have now become fit enough to extend that distance even further. Hence my previous entry, Walking Manhattan.

The more I walk, the more convinced I am that I can tackle the length of Broadway, which for my purposes I am measuring from the 207th Street/Inwood subway station to the running bull sculpture at Bowling Green. According to Google Maps this is a total distance of 20.4 kilometres, or 12.67 miles. Again, according to Google, this distance could be covered in around four hours and eleven minutes of continuous walking.

Clearly, a reasonably fit person should have no trouble completing this walk. However, at 61 years of age, I am not quite reasonably fit – or ready to take on 20 kilometres. Yet. But I’m getting there. By the time I hit the streets of New York City in July, I will be ready, although I have no intention of completing the distance in one long continuous four hour walk. With rest stops and some sightseeing along the way, it is more likely to take the better part of 8-10 hours, but complete it I will.

So if you have problems like I do with exercise, take my advice and don’t call it by that name. Instead call it Training for Travel. It might just be the incentive you need to get up off the couch and out to the gym or onto the streets of your neighbourhood, in preparation for your next journey.

The Charm of Broadway

~ By Joy Cagil

We always leave a beloved place in order to return to it sometime. Broadway in New York city is such a place for me, and I return to it as often as I can. Sometimes, I take a flight to JFK or to the La Guardia Airports and then a taxi to a hotel in Manhattan as close to or in Broadway; at other times, I return to it in my heart and in my writings.

Broadway has inspired many poets. Of the old school, Sandburg has the pessimistic look when he says: "Hearts that know you hate you/... Cursing the dreams that were lost / In the dust of your harsh and trampled stones." Walt Whitman's excited and dynamic words describe more of what I feel about this parcel of New York City: " Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion, /Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments." In fact, Broadway is and has been the theatre district not only for the United States but possibly for the entire world

Broadway, today, extends from the 34th Street to the 56th, on the east and the west of the avenue called Broadway with Times Square at its core. Broadway is most famous for its stage shows. The longest running Broadway shows to date are The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Les Miserables, A chorus Line, Oh! Calcutta, Beauty and the Beast, and Rent.

Broadway's becoming a theatre district goes far back to the time before the Revolutionary War. In mid-eighteenth century when two actors wanted to bring the staging of the plays of Shakespeare to Manhattan, the seeds of Broadway were sown. The first theatre in Manhattan was in Nassau Street. Later on, P.T. Barnum operated an entertainment complex at Broadway and Prince Street. During the first few years, a variety of shows entertained the working and the middle classes. When the Astor Place Theater opened, these theatre goers rose in a riot, objecting to the upper class audiences.

The first performance that added dance and music to a play was The Black Crook, in 1866. Its duration was five and a half hours. This musical attracted so many audiences that musicals became high quality entertainment. At the turn of the twentieth century, some of the earliest musicals were Cakewalk, George Washington Jr., A Trip to Coontown, The Fortune Teller, Little Johnny Jones, and 45 Minutes from Broadway.

Twentieth Century brought Babes in Toyland, Naughty Marietta, and The Red Mill. Since colored lights did not last long, white lights were used at the time; thus, Broadway took the nickname "The Great White Way."

The advent of the motion picture industry and the Actors Equity Association strike were feared to bring a halt to Broadway; quite the contrary, during the roaring twenties, Broadway flourished and added serious drama to its light-hearted repertoire and Ziegfeld revues. Oklahoma was the first such hit. At that time, Noel Coward, Rudolf Friml, Sigmund Romberg produced memorable work alongside with the eternal Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Rodgers and Hart.

Then, in 1947, Tony Awards were established to recognize the best performers and performances of the American Theater and especially Broadway. Nowadays, most shows are made for profit by the many theatre establishments in the area, although some are produced by non-profit organizations such as the Roundabout Theater Company, Manhattan Theater Club, and The Lincoln Center Theater. On the average, musicals run longer than non-musical plays, and some of the successful musicals and plays go on tour to other cities in the off season or after their curtains close on Broadway.

Besides the Broadway theatre district, smaller Off Broadway theatres that are located between 57th and 72nd Streets offer less publicized, less expensive, yet more experimental and daring plays. Sporadically, a successful Off Broadway show will later run on a Broadway stage. Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Godspell, Chorus Line, and Sunday in the Park with George are among such works.

Then, in Manhattan exist Off-Off-Broadway theatres with less that 100 seats for staging smaller amateur performances such as the Flea Theater in TriBeCa. After K. W. Bromley referred to Off-Off-Broadway as "Indie Theater" in his acceptance of an Innovative Theater award in 2005, Off-Off-Broadway shows are sometimes called the Indie Theater shows.

Broadway shows' greatest rival today is the television. The finest plays and musicals and the most talented theatre actors have to compete with the corniest TV shows for audience recognition, mainly because of the high cost of the tickets and the amount of people a theatre can hold. Watching a live stage show, a serious play, or a musical is a great thrill that cannot be matched by the movies or the television.

For me, the streets of Broadway add to the dash of its theatres, musicals, comedy clubs, and movie houses. Broadway and Times Square is where I can walk in and out of two to five-star hotels, coffee houses like the Starbucks, diners and gourmet restaurants; or where I can browse inside all kinds of shops but especially gift shops that sell theatre paraphernalia such as costumes, masks, and props; or I can stroll and absorb the excitement of other pedestrians, the street-corner preachers, and the lights of the establishments while I watch the limousines bringing actors to performances and actors signing autographs in front of the theatre buildings, or an occasional scalper selling last minute tickets to shows with the corner of his eye guarding the whereabouts of the police.

Like Whitman, I too, "arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the crowd, and gaze," because with all its coquettishness, Broadway makes life turn around our drama of existence.

Joy Cagil is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Writers.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joy_Cagil

Image: Young Frankenstein, Broadway, May 11, 2008

Photo: Jim Lesses

In Review: Knopf MapGuide: New York

~ When I travelled to New York in the spring of 2008, for the start of my two month stay, I had several ‘indispensable’ guide books in my suitcase, but it didn’t take long before one small book proved to be the most indispensable of all.

Alfred A. Knopf/Random House, produce a series of city specific “MapGuides” (as they call them), that are compact, filled with information, illustrated with large, fold-out, easy to read maps, and which just as importantly, are very lightweight.

The New York MapGuide runs to just 48 pages, but don’t let that put you off. The designers of these little books have managed to pack a wealth of information into those pages that other publishers would do well to make note of.

You begin with an opening fold-out map of New York which helps you visualise the eight large districts the guide is divided into. At the end of the MapGuide are another four pages of valuable information, handy tips and useful address.

The eight districts with their accompanying fold-out maps are:

1. Downtown
2. Lower East Side and East Village
3. SoHo, Greenwich Village, Chelsea and TriBeCa
4. Midtown East
5. Times Square and the Theatre District
6. Upper East Side
7. Upper West Side, and finally
8. Central Park and Harlem.

For each district there is a double-page of addresses listing restaurants, cafés, bars, music venues and shops, followed by a fold-out map for the relevant district with essential attractions and places of interest to see. While the shops, attractions and places of interest are by no means the only ones on offer in New York City, all the main buildings and attractions are listed in the guides or marked on the maps.

The last fold-out consists of transport maps for the Manhattan subway system and Manhattan’s bus services, and four pages of information that include a selection of hotels ranging in price from $70 up to $300 and over.

What I also like about the MapGuide is that despite the brevity of the entries, they still manage to pack all the essential information you need into the space allocated for them – as this entry for the Woolworth Building shows:

Woolworth Building, 233 Broadway (Barclay St). Commissioned by Frank Woolworth for his company headquarters, this building is as big as the empire he create. In 1909 the five-and-dime-store king purchased a piece of land on Broadway and paid for his skyscraper in cash. Four years later the tallest building in the city was opened: an enormous 60-story (792-ft) Gothic structure with a Latin cross-shaped lobby, marble walls, Byzantine-style mosaic ceilings – everything here exalts the virtues of work and prosperity. (New York MapGuide, 2006, Ed.)

There you have it. An encapsulated history of the Woolworth Building in just 79 words and numbers! We learn who commissioned it and when, how long it took to complete and how it was paid for, how tall it is and even something about the architecture and design features of the building. Concise writing at its best.

To complete this small and incredibly useful package, the MapGuide has a Thematic Index. That is, an index listing all the sites and addresses in the guide by theme. This makes it very easy to find restaurants for example, or museums or parks and gardens.

As already noted, this slim guide weighs next to nothing, fits easily into a handbag, backpack, or coat pocket, is easy to use and nowhere near as conspicuous as fighting with the large fold-out Manhattan maps that many visitors seem to struggle with. Nor do you have to lug around large, heavy guide books filled with hundreds of pages of tightly packed information.

As long as you have done the bulk of your research and reading utilising larger publications before your New York visit, and assuming you already know what you want to see in New York City when you set out each day, the New York MapGuide should be all you need to get you through the day in that magnificent metropolis.

Highly recommended.

Note: The above review and quote is based on the 2006 edition of the New York MapGuide.

Click here to buy the 2009 edition of the Knopf MapGuide: New York (Knopf Mapguides).