Monday, August 15, 2011

Happening Again

As a New Yorker, or as someone living in New York, a person gets used to seeing movies and TV shows being filmed as well as photo-shoots commencing. Since living in New York puts a person in a perpetual hurry, these things are ignored.

Also, living in New York gives a person the ability to identify places throughout the City in films, television, and print ads and associate their own experiences with those places. A particular type of knowledge grows: the power of recognition, like the ability to see a filmed Manhattan skyline and be able to tell if was shot from Brooklyn Heights or Greenpoint or West New York. Or a scene in the Robert DeNiro/James Franco's The City by the Sea, where DeNiro goes into a building in Tribeca. Seconds later they show his window and fire escape, with Manhattan in the background, in a perspective that's definitely from Brooklyn. This mashes of two separate neighborhoods a few miles apart that New Yorkers would recognize.

One more scene I'd like to mention: in the opening episode of Season 9 of The Simpsons, one of the funniest episodes in their canon, "The City of New York vs Homer Simpson" ends with Homer driving the family over a bridge, ostensibly out of the city. The bridge is designed to look like the Brooklyn Bridge, but the background silhouette of the City places the actual bridge that was used for the visual aspect of the background as the Williamsburg Bridge, which means they're leaving the City for respite in Long Island.

Basically, living there makes a person used to seeing locations they recognize from everyday life all over the place in print, television, and films.

Since LA is mostly comprised of a patchwork of urban blight, I never expected to see this, when I opened one of my newly arrived magazines:



This is the Broadlind Hotel behind the Jeep, a spot I'm going to put up a post about later and that's right around the corner and down the way from us. Here's my mock up of the same photo with less airbrushing and a less awesome camera.



It's been a while since noticing a national advertising campaign that has landmarks I deal with in everyday life.

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