Most civilians probably don’t fully appreciate the job of a policeman, but the New York City Police Museum-which opened Jan. 19-is meant to provide a glimpse into the working life of the men in blue.
The museum installation includes a multi-monitor exhibit that runs videos depicting some of the divisions of the New York Police Department. The videos were directed by Pete Sillen, who is repped for commercials by New York-based Washington Square Films.
Among the divisions included are detective squad, hostage negotiation unit, emergency service unit, forensic artist unit, auto crime division, housing, mounted unit, vice enforcement division, pickpocket squad and decoy units, patrol officers and police academy. The short videos aim to give viewers a sense of what the people assigned to these units do on a day-to-day basis, what they’ve learned about crime and what they like about their jobs.
Alice Rubin, the supervising producer on the project, recommended Sillen as a director. She had worked with Washington Square as a freelance producer and was familiar with the company and with Sillen’s work.
"I thought Pete-and everyone at Washington Square-had the right attitude and demeanor for this project," said Rubin. "It meant ingratiating yourself and really understanding the lives of officers, which I think is difficult for most people who don’t know why cops go out there and do this. And everyone who worked on this project was enthusiastic about the idea; they understood that working on a job for the NYPD was really a project about the history of New York."
Ben Rubin, who bears no relation to Alice Rubin, served as the project’s executive producer; he is the owner of New York-based EAR [Electronic Arts Research] Studio, which designs and produces media for installations. Ben Rubin said he was impressed with Sillen’s background in documentaries, particularly his cinematography: "Pete and his crew did an amazing job of getting out there and working with the police. They had a very short amount of time to do this, compared to what a normal documentary schedule would be."
Sillen embarked on the project in April and completed it in June. He lensed 13 of the 18 videos himself, and tapped freelance cameramen Tony Martin and Adam Cohen to shoot the remaining segments. It was a time-intensive project, noted Sillen, as there were a lot of shoot days and they lensed in every borough.
"The tricky part was that you never know when something is going to happen," recalled Sillen. "There’s so much time you have to log, just actually riding around. Some of that stuff looks like it was shot in one day, but some of it [happened] over a course of time. And some of them worked very strange hours: The transit pickpocket unit was on really early because they want to catch the rush hour. I was at their roll call at five a.m.; their work winds down at nine-thirty to ten a.m., but then they have the afternoon rush hour."
For the transit pickpocket segment, Sillen designed a tiny "spy camera" which he rigged in a backpack so that he could follow the officers without foiling their undercover operations.
As an observer who got to ride with the police on their runs, Sillen got to experience a share of the danger that lawmen face every day. For a segment on the housing unit, Sillen was required to wear a bulletproof vest as he filmed the cops conducting a "vertical patrol" of a housing development in Brooklyn. During that patrol, we see the police taking an elevator to the top of the building; starting with the roof, they systematically work their way down to the ground floor to ensure the premises are secure.
Even though the development was equipped with surveillance video cameras wired to the precinct (this so-called "viper system" has substantially reduced crime in the housing units, report police), the housing patrol was still an unnerving experience. "I wasn’t apprehensive until I was in the elevator and I was the first guy standing there when the door opened," he said. "I thought twice about stepping out, but I think I got swept up and pushed out and the cops took over this hallway."
Ultimately, Sillen didn’t witness any dramatic rescues or arrests. "One thing I liked about this project was that it kind of captured their average day, which doesn’t always entail making an arrest or doing anything beyond what you’d normally do. But it still shares the mundane and the more exciting parts of their day."
Since the videos are displayed over two or three monitors, the exhibit created a more complete visual experience, Ben Rubin contended. "We had multiple cameras wherever we could [place them]. In some cases, you can see different camera angles of a scene simultaneously," he said. "It brings a certain dynamic you don’t often get in traditional media. In the post, if we were doing a two-monitor piece, we would in some cases alternate the original cut [put on one monitor], and then find B-monitor footage to support the original footage. If we had an officer driving in a car on the A-monitor, we’d then find a POV shot looking out of the car to put on the B-monitor. Not only do you get a sense of the person talking, but you get a sense of the environment as well. It’s quite effective; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts."
The videos were edited in-house at Washington Square Films by freelance editors Penny Powell, Melissa Neidich and Jed Ehrmann. Online editing and audio mixing were done by Pete Beaudreau, who freelances regularly at Washington Square.
