New York has long been a destination for production, whether it be on location or on stage. In this week’s look at New York, SHOOT asked agency producers the following questions about shooting in New York: What was your most recent New York shoot–please include client, director, and production company? What was the shoot like? What’s the best part about shooting in New York? The worst? How often do you shoot in New York? Do you think that will increase this year?
Hyatt Choate, Senior VP/executive producer
BBDO New YorkWe shot Pepsi with Traktor over the summer. The shoot went great–there is a great energy about shooting in New York, and there is no better looking location than Manhattan. BEST: Being on the city streets with all the people made it very exciting. WORST: Being on the city streets with all the people taking pictures and shoving you around.
[We shoot in New York] once or twice a year. … I hope [our shooting in New York increases]. The city is a great place to shoot. We are actually shooting in New York next week.
Bob Nelson, Director of broadcast production
DDB, New YorkWe most recently shot a package of New York Lottery commercials, “Dollar Store” and “Out the Window,” with Jim Jenkins of Hungry Man. Walter Brindak, our executive producer on Lottery, shoots here nearly every month. In the past year, we’ve also shot work for Diet Pepsi, Cotton, Merck, and Georgia Pacific–all in New York.
New York has great locations, a deep pool of quality talent, excellent studios, and top crews. Our people can work efficiently, since we’re not traveling. Our young people learn and grow by being exposed to more shooting, and our senior people have the opportunity to involve themselves directly in more productions.
For DDB New York, it’s a win-win situation–except when it’s cold.
Oscar Thomas, Senior producer
Driver, New York
Shooting in New York is hectic. With The Brooklyn Brothers we teamed up with Kinka Usher [of House of Usher, Santa Monica] and shot most of the 21 Rangers spots in two days at Madison Square Garden. What was mad was we had to fit ourselves in between Elton John, stadium cleaning teams and the Garden people operating the Zambonis, preparing the ice for the first game of the season. The ice hadn’t been exposed for over a year so no one knew what it was going to look like and how long it would take to prep.
So what it boiled down to was that we had a lot of competition for time. I think that outlines one of the key issues with shooting in New York–film crews can normally control the flow but in New York, there’s the don’t give a @#$% attitude.
The best thing about New York is the locations and the talent–I think you can pretty much find anything you want here which is why we all love it so much.
The worst: New York has a lot of competing elements that can really get in the way of production, traffic, noise, space, fees, permits… production companies are normally pretty good at dealing with these elements but you can get nailed if you’re not careful.
We’re shooting three to four campaigns a year in New York. In the last four months we shot the Rangers and Knicks in New York, and have the Nets coming up later on this year; so far it looks pretty even. I think with budgets going the way that they are, it’s becoming more attractive to shoot in New York for local agencies because we’ll just use the travel budget for production–that extra 25K travel line item can go a long way when you want it to.
