Filming In Brooklyn

Today, Filming In Brooklyn has its shortest commute ever to visit a shoot, because a TV show is being filmed in my house!

The soon-to-debut A&E true crime series Watching The Detectives is shooting in my dining room as I write this. So I get to experience this from a totally different perspective, with twenty or so people in and around my house.

I have to say, I feel sorry for these people. Right now, my house is undergoing a massive renovation, which means that we’re not really unpacked, none of the rooms are being used as they eventually will be, nothing is organized or put away, and everything is covered in a layer of dust at all times. And most of the doors – including the bathroom door – don’t have knobs. Not an ideal work environment.

When a producer friend of mine called and asked if he could use my house for a shoot, I didn’t hesitate. In fact, I forgot to ask my husband. When it did finally occur to me to ask him, he emailed back with “Sure, anything to get you to clean the house.” Joke’s on him, because they wanted “gritty.” Well, they got it!

Yesterday was the busiest, craziest day I’ve had in a long time, with two events and a shoot in the middle. So I had zero time to prepare the house in any way. This morning, as I was trying to get my kids ready and fed and out the door, I was also trying to shove as many things in closets as I could. But when the crew got here, I could see it in there eyes: Oh man, have we got our work cut out for us!

As they looked around, I heard someone say, “Um, do the characters have kids?” The answer was no, which meant that anything remotely kid-like had to be boxed up and put away. There is no corner of our house that doesn’t have kid stuff in it, so I’m sure it was an annoying job.

Our living room soon filled with equipment, and then they decided to use that room as holding for the actors as well, so the small room filled with people.

Meanwhile, the dining room was being dressed with beer bottles and cigarette butts, and even though this was supposed to be a “white trash” apartment, it still looked better than it had in a while.

They’ve shot a couple of scenes now in the dining room, and after one more they’ll be moving to the living room, so now the equipment and actors have been moved outside to my stoop.

I knew what the show was about in general: detectives relate stories about cases they’ve worked on, and some scenes are re-enacted by actors. So I knew that the scenes being shot probably would not be happy scenes. And I was right. A lot of yelling, swearing, hair pulling, more yelling, and threats. I’m just waiting for one of my neighbors to call the police. They must think that we’re having one hell of a fight, but they’re probably confused as to why we keep yelling the same things at each other over and over.

More in a bit – I have to find where they packed my laptop charger!

Originally posted on Filming In Brooklyn