> If you're thinking about doing like this guy did, please don't.
The author starts by stating:
> The area did not seem to be closed off so obviously I went in to take a closer look.
And
> I was probably there for around 30 minutes or so until someone finally asked me if I was part of the crew and then kindly asked me to leave which I did.
Does one need to go through life like they are stepping on eggshells?
My guess would be that you're interpreting the comment as, "Please don't accidentally wander onto a film set out of ignorance," whereas my interpretation (and perhaps that of those who have voted for it) of the comment was, "Please don't be inspired by this to seek out and actively trespass on a closed film set."
I would say the title is disingenuous the same way clickbait is. A suggested alternate could be, “the time I wandered around somebody’s worksite until the inconvenience of my presence outweighed the crews’ Canadian-level non-confrontational demeanor”.
But that’s not as grabby.
Are you a machine? This is how machines act. "NO BOUNDARY DETECTED - PROCEEDING!" without any context awareness.
Why not instead be considerate and respectful for others' work by not ruining it? Road workers don't always have perfect boundaries and yet I hope you don't just go step into their paint while reciting your constitutional rights. This is the same thing without the paint.
The work was not ruined. The film crew were working in a public space that the blog's author apparently had every right to be in. If they wanted to avoid any possibility of interaction with the public then they could have built a private set, but filming on a public street was presumably cheaper. I don't see why an uninvolved third party should have their rights curtailed just to save some corporation money.
Public areas can be very easily closed off if you ask the local government, most have a form ready for it, it's very usual - and at that point you have absolutely zero rights to be there, it's trespassing. It's most likely this was the case there as well, they wouldn't be able to setup the whole shop there otherwise. And it's not cheaper, it's actually much more expensive - but the result is better.
Corporations aren't the only ones making movies, btw. And the whole "but my rights" talk when it's about a person who could've just taken a different street makes me laugh, nothing else. Is that really how you think about your day to day life, or is it just a post-facto rationalization?
Exactly. The film crew should have had the contextual awareness to block off the area and respectfully inform people to go around if they didn't want people walking through. It seems like they didn't have at least the contextual awareness. From the pictures, I doubt I would realize it's a film set.
I've accidentally wandered onto a film set before. When it's in a public space it's not always obvious what's going on or that you shouldn't be there. I had no idea why a generally quite busy part of town was almost entirely devoid of traffic that day. There were no clear signs or ways for me to know what was going on until I talked to a random guy and he told me.
Perhaps your ability to detect and understand context is simply vastly superior to mine.
Especially when they're shooting on one side of a street near dusk (quite common for the good light) in downtown... yea, it's easy to assume you can walk on the other side of the street before realizing that the crew has shut down the entire block since they're capturing shots across the open street and all those randos walking on the other side of the street are extras.
That said, they'll often just let you wander across as long as you're not wearing distracting clothing.
Accidents happen, and I am not perfect too. I live in a city where film sets in public spaces are an (almost) everyday thing, so I also wandered into a film set few times. But I'd never do it on purpose - when you meet them at a bar you'll see they really do work hard, and that random strangers at the set are a really big problem they face daily.
It's funny how the robot argument can apply to anything and the contrary: are all filming crews overworked robots unable to willingly decide to engaging in casual conversation with a stranger who happened to be in a public area before it was cordoned off?
It's not about the film crew being overworked robots who can't talk, it's about accidentally ruining their work without even realizing it by walking into the middle of filming. This dude got lucky that he didn't ruin anything. The next 1000 dudes who will try based on his blogpost won't be so lucky - and I bet the film crews won't be as happy talking to them.
The film crew got lucky that they didn't ruin anything by failing to secure the location for their shoot. If a film crew wants to exclude the public from a public space, it is on them to make that happen. J. Random Bystander has no responsibility to know or care what a film crew is hoping to accomplish.
It’s clear that the OP is curious, which was ultimately harmless in this case.
But as someone who lives in Los Angeles and sees this all the time — and has many friends who work on sets — you absolutely should not do this. Sets almost always “look like they’re open.” That doesn’t mean they are, it’s because there’s a-million-and-one things being done on the set by _skilled_ people who are being paid near minimum wage, working late, getting yelled at, and skipping meals and still can’t get everything that needs to be done done (Hollywood is lucrative once you get above the ground floor, but those early levels are brutal in every part of the industry).
How would you feel if someone just came and sat next to you working on a PR in a coffee shop and kept asking questions about everything you were doing? Now imagine you were as exhausted as the people on set, and there were dozens of people asking you the same question. Because this happens all the time here in Los Angeles.
Again, totally agree what they do is interesting! But they’re not doing it for you, and they’re in the middle of working.
Do you walk into the middle of a construction site when a crew is working because you’re interested in that process, too?
Bystanders standing around watching and commenting on construction work is so common that there's a name for a specific type of guy who does that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umarell
Construction sites are often on private property and in any case have clearly marked boundaries, though. I don't think it's unreasonable for people doing work in a public space to expect and handle a certain amount of polite curiosity from the public.
Yeah, my analogy could have been more clear, I think Umarells are a fun cultural phenomenon.
I meant that even in a public space for construction, however, spectators usually aren't allowed to wander into the middle of active construction, bumping shoulders with the workers. Staying off to the side is fine – as is also normal when watching a set in action! It's just the folks that get in the middle of a site who have no business being there (or worse, try to pretend to be an authorized background extra and ruin a shot because they have no idea where they're supposed to stand) that disrupt things.
> If you're thinking about doing like this guy did, please don't.
The author starts by stating:
> The area did not seem to be closed off so obviously I went in to take a closer look.
And
> I was probably there for around 30 minutes or so until someone finally asked me if I was part of the crew and then kindly asked me to leave which I did.
Does one need to go through life like they are stepping on eggshells?