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Comment by prmoustache | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand they act like they owned the street and you have no rights to be there.

I have been annoyed by a film crew filming a netflix series for 2 x 5 days this spring around my house and it was fucking annoying. From the screetching tires and the horrible smell of that saab 900 they had chosen for one of the main character while I was on videocalls, to preventing me from actually leave my house and start my motorbike to do some errands and leave cigarette butts in front of my door.

Not a single warning a few days before so I can accomodate nor a compensation for the annoyance. Additionnally it may not be entirely the fault of tge film set but the police would put signs only the night before and tow all cars still parked in the street the next morning. Nice for the people not in town or who simply don't use their car everyday.

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This literally happened to my neighbour when a film crew came into our neighbourhood.

My neighbour was out of town, off vacationing with their family. They had a large family with several kids, so they had a good 2 or 3 cars parked around the front of their home.

The film crew had mandated that all cars needed to be cleared from the set. So absolutely no cars on the street. They went around asking people to move all their cars down to the school parking lot a couple blocks away. My neighbours weren't home to hear this or even be notified.

The set director (I think that must be who they were cause they yelled a lot at everyone) was cursing at my neighbour's home, waving hands angrily, and called a tow truck to move all of the neighbour's cars. A person came to ask if we knew where they were or had their contact number. We told them they were out of town.

They did not move the cars back. School re-opened after the long weekend, neighbour got fined for parking tickets down at the school. Came back home to missing vehicles, called the cops, freaked out, eventually found their cars down at the school, had to pay over $500 in parking fines, one of their cars had even been towed down to the impound lot for improper parking on a private space.

It was a gigantic mess. Doubt the film crew cares, they were long gone and probably not even in the country by the time my neighbour was capable of filing a grievance with them.

In NY the film crews out up emergency no parking signs 2-3 days in advance which 1) are issued by the police; 2) describe the time and date of the shooting and name of the production; 3) list the name of a production assistant in charge and a cell phone number. Seems like a pretty good compromise.

How does that fix the issue where someone is on a week-long vacation? Seems like a letter a few weeks in advance is they least they could do.

That is also commonplace.

In many large cities, there's shorter-than-a-week minimum notices for street closures. For example in DC, no-parking permits have to be posted at least 72 hours in advance.

If you are going out of town for longer than that amount of time, you either need to find somewhere you can pay to park your car, or you need to get a neighbor or friend to check in on it periodically and move it if there's a sign.

This responsibility is the only cost of using public space to store your car, aside from a nominal annual vehicle registration fee. Seems fair to me.

Most big cities have the shorter notice periods because they also generally have maximum parking time limits. In Seattle, for instance, you have to move your car every 72 hours if you're parked on the street.

Is it enforced? No. But technically, it's there.

> Is it enforced? No. But technically, it's there.

In California we have the same law, and it is certainly enforced, usually at the behest of nosy neighbors who have nothing else to do.

It's probably the same here -- it's enforced extremely selectively and only because they're tired of getting the complaint for the dozenth time.

To verify, they usually have to mark your tires to check you haven't moved the car in the 72 hours (you could've just parked in the same place), so it usually requires two outcalls to even issue a ticket. That's a lot of work when you're anywhere outside of the downtown core where that initial call could be done as part of other work.

> Is it enforced? No. But technically, it's there.

Very much enforced in NYC - where they do around $600 million a year in parking tickets.

I would argue that most of those 600 million are not "parked for too long in one place", which is what I said is not enforced.

The vast majority of them are likely the ones that can be verified on the spot -- things like being parked in a no parking zone (whether street cleaning or regular), expired or hasn't paid parking, etc.

Yes. That is correct.

NYC has alternate side of the street parking on most streets which means that for a two hour period, typically midday, on Mon/Thu or Tue/Fri. This has the effect of making you move your car every 72 hours, and it is trivially enforceable. Additionally there are 1 & 2 hour spots which are typically metered.

The "improper parking on a private space" example in the story a few posts up strongly suggests that the car was parked in their own driveway. And yet the car was towed and impounded.

Even in the event of a street closure, I expect that a car parked on my own driveway is fine. And since I'm not using public space to store it, your "public space to store your car" comment is not applicable.

I took it to mean it was improperly parked at the school.

The filming crew towed the cars to a school's parking lot. When the school opened the cars were towed and impounded.

Thanks for the correction.

I understand how that happened, but wow. I hope that the filming crew was forced to pay for this.

A lot of cities require that the city tows the car, rather than the filming crew. Exactly to avoid this kind of problem.

This is correct. My neighbour had some of their cars parked in their driveway on their own property.

Film crew moved all of their cars off of their own property down to the school.

Once school opened up, they were now “improperly parked” (by the film crew) and fines were issued and one of the cars was impounded.

In NYC you generally have to move your car twice a week due to street cleaning. No way you could park for weeks without issue.

Yeah; I live in Toronto, and that's the closest thing that gets me to road rage. Streets are randomly closed for extended period of time, and everybody involved acts like... unprintables. Which, I get, is a self-feeding process - public members are unprintables to police and security and film makers, who then in turn are pre-emptive unprintables to anybody. But gawd, it's an awful experience that's difficult to describe to people who haven't lived it - it's my home on my street with the shop I go to and school my kids go to, and my car or my bus station I take to my work, and suddenly we can't use it, are third-class citizens on our own street, with no rights or permission or ask, and not for some emergency infrastructure process, but so that Jaw Sharks On a Plane 27 can be filmed :-<

I have some empathy to the film crew, but while I'm all about practical effects in some ways, the city neighbourhoods should be CGId ASAP. This isn't a tiny-non-issue. Think about all the movies and shows on all the networks on all the streaming services. The 37 seasons of NCIS and 32 seasons of Law & Order and ten million episodes of all the crappy shows - every how many scenes in all of them closing down some neighbourhood somewhere for the shot of actor walking down the street.

Isn't the issue with your city, then? It's not like the film crew just annexed your street without asking anybody. Your city council approved it, likely after several public hearings. At least that's how it worked in my small hometown 25 years ago when a major Hollywood film shot there. They made a mess scattering dish soap on the streets and river front to look like snow and closed a public park for a few weeks. Lots of people were angry, but at the city council, not the camera people. The film crew only did it after a bunch of people in charge told them they could.

>Your city council approved it, likely after several public hearings

“But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.”

“Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.”

“But the plans were on display . . .”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’”

Well the film crew were still rude with the people, most of them having no idea what was happening before seeing the equipment nor having experience with how they operate.

You're assuming they worked within the bounds the city agreed with them. I encountered a filming location near me recently, and the crew absolutely tried to restrict my movements beyond what was legally permitted, and did so rudely - presumably to appear authoritative, so that I would simply obey them.

They are actually renting the street and are paying the city for it. Sure there are guerilla film crews that just show up and do stuff, but that tends to be very lightweight, in and out quick, or using a location with so little traffic that it won't really impinge.

However, it's really the city's responsibility to notify everyone, unless otherwise negotiated; when film crews do all that it's generally a courtesy thing. Sometimes the crew wants to do that in advance but the city will ding them for taking the initiative.

Film shoots are a big kickback to the police department. Hiring cops for security is required contractually and it's a sweet assignment because overtime is inevitable. Those jobs go to cops who are close to retirement because pensions are usually calculated as a % of final 2 years' pay. Smart crews also hire or plan their own security because the cops just show up to eat and flirt with the actresses and can't be relied on to watch gear.

Location scouts get paid the big bucks to not only know where to shot but how and to grease all the appropriate wheels.

> However, it's really the city's responsibility to notify everyone, unless otherwise negotiated; when film crews do all that it's generally a courtesy thing.

Is this really common? If so, I'm glad we have rules here that say otherwise. If you want a permit to close a street in my city, it's your responsibility to notify residents and businesses affected. If you don't, the city might not issue it. And even if they do, if a car is in your way because you didn't notify folks in advance, the police will happily stand around to watch what happens. Here, our tax dollars go toward using the roads, not closing them. You pay for notices, you pay for the barricades, you pay for the guards. You even pay for the police, standing around, laughing at you for failing to follow through on your obligation.

The reason it's sometimes left to the city is that they don't want the production company to start taking the initiative before the commencement of the permit period; they might ask for more than they're entitled to by the permit, or city officials might not like them treading on their toes. Recall that the production company is paying for the privilege, and it's the city that sets the prices and conditions.

I'm guessing this varies a lot by location and what the local authorities are like.

I live in a turn of the century neighborhood with a lot of craftsman bungalows, four squares, victorians, etc. So there's usually a couple smaller film productions every summer.

They're generally quite considerate. If they're doing an exterior shot they'll only block people going through for the brief moment they're actually filming. They're organized and tidy other than yes there's gonna be a ton of generator cables running around. Knitting seems to be the big hobby for staff waiting for the next shot.

I talked with the owner of the convenience store about this stuff one time. Some production was shooting across the corner and liked the look of his store and wanted to use it as a backdrop for a few things. So they worked out a simple deal where they'd repaint his entire exterior in trade for the rights to film. He was totally happy with the situation and said they didn't really disrupt his business.

I wonder what ends up making the difference?

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