Reasons to Love New York
New Yorkcelebrates the citys timeless, peerless connection to movies.
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Most movies dont want to be a postcard New York City, he says.
You want to feel the milieu of the city or a specific neighborhood.
Here, Thompsons five rules for building a non-cookie-cutter New York set.
1.Start by looking.
Scouting helps you define the look of the movie, and it happens early on.
Its a Russian neighborhood, and its wintertime, sparse, dark.
2.Feeling comes first.
It just has a feeling that reads like New York.
Often its necessary to re-create interiors, but you dont want it to feel like a built set.
You want it to feel integral to the film and to the city.
So youd go through the buildings front door and through this lobby thats almost like a mausoleum.
And then you go into a small elevator and get up to the narrow hallway.
Then you go into the apartment, and there are big windows, but theyre layered with window treatments.
3.And the set might have to move.
Wed have people literally taking the wall out and putting it back so that the camera wouldnt see it.
We did a lot of old-fashioned theatrical tricks.
4.Add some wheels.
I love public transportation, and I love showing it in movies.
ForTheGirl on the Train,we built a Metro-North train car.
I remember building the big, thick gaskets out of wood and painting them to look like rubber.
5.Let the city happen to you.
Let the city happen to you.
We filmedLittle Odessaduring a really harsh winter.
We were always getting rid of snow, putting it back for continuity.
It was like, Just get there as soon as it’s possible for you to.
I think now about how on bigger productions, something like that would never happen.
It was the spirit of guerrilla filmmaking.
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