Luckily, the crews that I’ve encountered so far have been polite. I’ve seen over and over how they generally let people pass until the very last second before shooting starts. Just the other day on the Vanderbilt Mars location, a woman came walking down the street and got miffed when she was stopped at Dean and asked to wait. She said a little snottily “Well how long do I have to wait, I just want to get home!” and the PA was like “Really, less than 60 seconds, I promise.” When they yelled cut about 30 seconds later and he told her to go ahead, her entire demeanor changed, and she actually stuck around for a few minutes asking questions about the production.

1. The Film Office already will put a neighborhood on the “Hot Zone List” if it’s had a lot of filming in a short period of time. There’s no set list of rules for what’s too much or for how long the spot stays on the Hot List. It’s more of a common sense thing. (A big stretch of Court St. is on the list right now.)

2. The economic impact is in a more spread out fashion, much like tourism impact is. In addition, Productions buy thousands of dollars worth of materials like lumber, paint, and hardware. Every person on the crew from out of town stays in a hotel or rents an apartment and eats every meal in a restaurant every day for as long as they’re here. It may not put money directly in your pocket, but it contributes to having a healthy economy as a whole.

14-21 days notice is utterly impractical. In the case of a movie, schedules are so fluid that anything more than a week in advance isn’t reliable. With commercials, they choose their locations as little as 2-3 days before shooting because they’re awarded the job as little as a week before shooting. No Parking signs are required to be up no less than 48 hours beforehand and the better Location Managers will post Resident Letters giving you a clue what will be going on and inviting you to contact them if you have anything going on (you’re moving and have a tractor trailer coming or you’re having an intimate dinner party with 50 of your closest friends). I’ve never had anyone contact me and then not been able to make arrangements that worked for everyone.

What benefits ? Most of the “benefits” leave the neighborhood when the film crew leaves. Local restaurants don’t make much off most film crews in my neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights, according to a couple of long-time restaurant owners I spoke to.

As for “area cachet”, many productions are often vague when it comes to location identification or even identify my neighborhood as another location (example: “Burn After Reading”, locations shot in Brooklyn Heights are identified as Georgetown, Virginia). To be honest, most of my neighbors prefer less “area cachet” when they come home from work in too much cachet Manhattan.

Now I will admit that a large number of people who work for New York-based film production companies benefit economically, including many native New Yorkers. However as far my neighbors are concerned (with the exception of the very small number of people renting out their properties to the film crews), the negatives definitely outweigh the positives.

Some limits should be set, like only a certain number of productions can occur in any given neighborhood/area/residential street over a certain period of time. Time limits for filming.

Maybe some compensation to every property owner on the blocks where film crew trucks are parked. Lets say 2-5 percent of what the production crew is paying to the owner whose property is being used for the main filming.

Better communication & transparency: At least 14-21 day notice for residents (signs put up on the street & on the doors of affected property ownes) with detailed information such as whose property (street address) will used for filming and their compensation for allowing this on their property. Let’s have some transparency here.