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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little detective work to find the number for the manager of the park in question (short of having an (as far as I know) unpublished list of the different districts and the managers of the parks in those districts) and call that manager for verbal permission to film in the park which he/she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

• Green Team at Brooklyn Bridge Park Sunday, 7 September 2008, 4:00 am
  Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2008Join the GREEN TEAM and help care for Brooklyn Bridge Park all summer long! We depend on volunteers to keep the park beautiful a. […]
• Bryant Park Chess Sunday, 7 September 2008, 4:00 am
  Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008The Chess Area, located next to the Fountain Terrace on 6th Avenue, provides the public with chess, checkers, backgammon, and Sc. […]
• US Open Sunday, 7 September 2008, 4:00 am
  Date: Sun, 07 Sep 2008In 2008, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis will celebrate its 30th anniversary as the home of the US Open Tennis Champio. […]

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