MOFTB: Scouting Tag Program Discontinued
“May 23, 2006- Effective June 30, 2006, the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting will no longer issue production scouting tags and all existing scouting tags will expire. Due to the success of the “Made in NY” tax incentive program, the City has accomplished its goal of attracting increased production business and employment for New Yorkers who work in the entertainment industry. In an effort to balance the needs of production and the communities in which they work, the MOFTB will no longer issue scouting tags. Easing the impact of parking upon neighborhoods will serve to keep locations film friendly, and allow the City to attract even more employment for our local entertainment professionals. The MOFTB will continue to issue tags to essential production vehicles with the shooting permit.”
Cinematical | NYC Cuts Film Industry Perk | Posted Jun 13th 2006 8:01PM by Christopher Campbell | Filed under: Newsstand
“Just when the city of New York is enjoying a surge in film production, hopefully cutting down on movies set in NYC but shot in Canada, a new decision is pissing off a lot of people in the movie business.”
“The Reeler | Tag, You’re Out: NYC Location Scouts’ Parking Perks Revoked | June 13, 2006
“AM New York’s Chuck Bennett today has the “latest” on the troubles affecting New York’s location scouts, whose liberal, city-sanctioned parking privileges will expire June 30–never to return. The news is kind of old–the Mayor’s Office for Film, Theater and Broadcasting made the announcement May 23–but in case you wanted to hear location scouts bitching on the record, here you go:”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060614/ap_en_mo/film_scout_parking_2 (dead link) | By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press Writer Tue Jun 13, 8:11 PM ET
“NEW YORK - Film scouts trolling New York City for its picturesque stoops and street corners won’t be free to park wherever they want now that officials are halting a special parking-permit program.”
I was interviewed by phone today (but evidently, not quoted by name) by Sara Kugler from WABC-Radio in New York City. Here is some of what we discussed and points I tried to make:
Looks like we location scouts might be losing our location scouting tag priveleges come July.
“And what exactly is a location scouting tag privelege?”, you say?
Well… upon completing a New York City filming permit application at the New York City Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcast (MOFTB), requesting scouting tag(s) and approval of MOFTB, location scout(s), (for the duration of time allotted on the permit) have considerable leeway and freedom to park anywhere in the five boros in order to see locations with potential for use in their production.
This is indeed a gift in a city the size and density of New York. Public parking is scarce at best and fraught with not only arcane parking restrictions, but sometimes those arcane parking restrictions are obscured further by the fact that the parking signs that contain those arcane parking restrictiction are, in fact, often absent, whether it be by theft/vandalism, perhaps having been in a spot where an auto accident occurred… there are a lot of reasons a parking sign could be missing in a town the size of NYC.
The location scouting tag basically gives you the privelege to park wherever you can (with the intention of performing your duties as a location scout), provided you dont place human life in jeopardy (i.e. obvious no-no’s like parking in front of a firehouse driveway, or in an ambulance exitway) and be immune to the city’s ubiquitous “Brownies” (NYPD Traffic Enforcement) and the quite pricy parking citations they are employed to hand out (the last parking ticket I got some years back cost something like $85). If you receive a ticket, you turn it in with your scouting tag- it goes away.
Doctors and foreign diplomats, as well as some members of the press (this could be an incomplete list) are eligible for many of these same priveleges.
Alas, reports of abuses as well as the fact (per the excerpted article above) that the city has achieved its filming incentive goals combined with the undebatable fact that parking in New York is scarce in the first place may spell the end to scouting tag priveleges for NYC location scouts.
I had a scouting tag once; I was working on a feature film, 9A several years go. The shooting schedule was tight, we were facing significant challenges regarding fulfilling locations required by the script, including scouting for night shots (at night) in what most would consider “less than desirable” parts of town; the scouting tag helped. A lot.
Another argument for continuing the scouting tag privelege in NYC:
New York is a world-class city. Some of the world’s most famous films (including tv shows, commercials, videos and photgraphs) have been made in NYC.
As a location scout, one of the reasons you live in the NYC area is to have an opportunity to work on projects of this caliber.
It is not unreal to assume that you could, in fact, find yourself driving around NYC (showing locations) in the same car together with an Oscar-winning director or acclaimed director of photography, a producer you just read about in a tabloid and a bazillion-dollar net-worth executive producer or financier, with the power between them to give the nod or say no to bringing $100 million or more in jobs or business to the city. (This is “economic development”. It’s good for cities. Production is good at that. And production doesnt pollute the air and water.) Anyway, I am sure you can see the motivation to let these people feel special and get their jobs done quickly and easily.
In contrast, the film industry has changed a lot in the past few years, nowadays, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller budget films in production in New York each year, thanks to the advent of the internet and digital imaging, which have effectively taken content distribution out of the hands of a few big-money players and put it into the hands of anyone with a passion to tell a story and can afford a camera, a crew, talent and their locations. Individually, these types of productions dont always spend that much, but as the sum of the parts, this group represents a sizable chunk of change in New York’s annual production income. It is this group that will be most affected by the scouting tag change, as they will have to figure into their budgets that their scouts will either have to pay for parking or for parking tickets. New York is already a fairly expensive town just to exist in, period; discontinuing the location scouting tag privelege could be one of many ways that production might have an incentive to go elsewhere. This is what is known as “runaway production”
It’s a couple of more weeks till the scouting tag priveleges are scheduled to go away. It’s been good.
- RH
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