It used to be when you wanted to film in New York City Parks (i.e. Central Park, Prospect Park (Brooklyn), etc, you had to do a little detective work to find the number for the manager of the park in question (short of having an (as far as I know) unpublished list of the different districts and the managers of the parks in those districts) and call that manager for verbal permission to film in the park which he/she managed.
Assuming you could track him/her down and get an answer to your request (this could traditionally sometimes take several days from my experience- woe if they were on vacation or otherwise out of the office) and get permission, you would then go to the NYC Mayors Office of Film, Theater and Broadcast (MOFTB) and add the location to your film permit.
Today, I called one of the park managers about filming in one the NYC Parks and got the ol’ voicemail, which instructed me to go to this webpage:
http://nyc.gov/html/dpr/html/film_shoot_form.html
So, I filled the form and submitted it over the internet. The form sent me an auto-email confirming my request and even assigned it a request number. The form goes to either a central party in charge of routing the requests, or possibly a database that automates this chore.
I’m keeping an eye on my email at this point waiting to get a response. *Follow-up Note*: The park manager that I needed an answer from called me for more details and approved my request within 24 hours.
Presumably, this form covers all the parks in the system. It seems a much more organized way to go about the Parks permitting procedure; it gives the park manager(s) a little breathing room to get their head in a space to deal with their request(s) instead of being bugged on the phone at inopportune times and/or having to scroll thru and listen to who knows how many voicemail messages to field filming requests in addition to what must be a myriad of other responsibilities that a New York City Parks Manager must have.
I’ll still have to take my permission (assuming they give me a green light for my request) to the permit office and add it to my Schedule “A”. It would be nice to be able to cut out this second step, but the two departments (the parks department and the permit office) need a way to talk to each other, so for now this a chore we’ll all have to live with.
NYC Parks Special Events
- MillionTreesNYC Tree Stewardship Workshop | Saturday, 4 July 2009, 12:00 am
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 2009Since the MillionTreesNYC campaign started, over 238,000 trees have been planted throughout the city, more than 30,000 just in s. […] - CityParks Kids: Diabatela & Wounlaba | Saturday, 4 July 2009, 12:00 am
Date: Wed, 08 Jul 2009Come watch Diabatela & Wounlaba perform traditional West African music.Start time: 10:30 amEnd time: 11:15 amContact phone: Loca. […] - River to River Festival: Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band with Jenny Lewis | Saturday, 4 July 2009, 12:00 am
Date: Sat, 04 Jul 2009Conor Oberst’s unique brand of roots Americana folk rock has gained him significant acclaim and set him on a trajectory to wides. […]
RH | GeoURL | NAC | Plazes | Dipity | outside.in | Mapufacture | Post Map
Social Networking