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Movie cops are our friends


Jeff Wexler

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the everpresent movie cops (at least on medium to big movies) helping out while shooting on Albert Broooks' "Defending Your Life" (mixed by Tommy Causey and boomed by Joe Brennan). The movie cops are an indispensible asset to the production sound department --- they can stop traffic! I remember on one job a relatively new producer put on the headphones and listened to a rehearsal and was horrified at the amount of traffic noise. He asked how I was going to stop all the traffic noise because he could hardly hear the actors' voices. I said not to worry, we won't have all that traffic noise when we actually roll. The next day at dailies this producer came up to me and said it was remarkable, no traffic noise... "how did you stop all that traffic noise?"  I said, "we stopped the traffic". He still persisted saying that he didn't know how we stopped it. Finally, I explained that we actually had the traffic STOPPED by the Police. The producer was still somewhat amazed that there coud be such a simple real world solution (and would later learn that it really isn't that simple when you're shooting the crucial dialog scene at 4 pm in rush hour and you hacve lost the ITC you had earlier).

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Guest repete86

I could have used some of them today.  I was recording some audio for a student film about 100 feet from a major road.  It sounded much better than I thought it would, but it was still far from perfect.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The movie cops are an indispensible asset to the production sound department --- they can stop traffic!

One of those things (besides the weather) us New Yorkers will always be jealous of you Angelenos for.  In New York, the movie coppers will only lock up traffic if the street is in the frame.  They are not allowed to hold traffic for sound only.

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Scott,

I think things are changing in S.F. (finally).  I was on a  photo shoot a few weeks ago (yes, wearing my acting hat) and they had no problem locking up traffic even when the shot was just on the sidewalk.  Now, this was a Sunday morning, but still on a busy street.

(Hoping to see more production in the bay area, and even more important, more local hires.  ;-)

Phil

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Scott,

I think things are changing in S.F. (finally).  I was on a  photo shoot a few weeks ago (yes, wearing my acting hat) and they had no problem locking up traffic even when the shot was just on the sidewalk.  Now, this was a Sunday morning, but still on a busy street.

(Hoping to see more production in the bay area, and even more important, more local hires.  ;-)

Phil

In SF it is entirely money related, as well as negotiated w/ the neighborhood and local businesses.  I have witnessed some very ugly altercations over this issue, with all concerned acting inappropriately.  Really major productions in the SF area ("Nash Bridges", "The Matrix" II and III, "Rent" etc) get the full LA cop treatment.  As Scott F said, the smaller projects, even if it is a big national commercial, large scale corporate or a short location shoot for an episodic do NOT get the same treatment.....

Philip Perkins

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