For many film fans and aspiring filmmakers, their first exposure to the varied and historic streets and sights of New York City is on screen in the many movies and TV shows that have filmed throughout the city. Comprised of five boroughs, NYC offers endless possibilities for filmmakers to find both unique and iconic settings where to film. Before filming, it recommended that you learn about NYC’s permit requirements. Below we culled together a list of some of the most legendary locations in the city.

SoHo

 

With boundaries set off by Houston Street, West Broadway, Canal Street and Crosby Street, SoHo—which stands for South of Houston—is identifiable by the intricate cast-iron architecture of many of its buildings, which were largely erected in the late 19^th century. It is also noted for its cobblestone streets paved with Belgian blocks.

SoHo gained prominence in the 1960s and 70s when the cheap locations that had been previously occupied by factories were refashioned by artists, creating affordable lofts and studios. Through the 1980s, SoHo remained a haven for artists as the cost of living was extremely low, but like many other areas in the city, during the decade, as more and more prosperous tenants were drawn to the area’s bohemian aura, there began a gradual exodus by the area’s artists that reached its climax during the 1990s.

Over the past two decades, SoHo has lost much of its gritty aura as it has been transformed into one of the city’s primary shopping areas, making it a popular attraction for tourists. Nonetheless, once visitors get off Broadway, the area still offers quieter and less commercialized side streets that filmmakers can use to capture a particular old-school New York feel, one perfectly caught in the film Basquiat which was filmed in SoHo.

Union Square

A hub for public transportation, shopping and dining, and people watching, Union Square serves as a gateway both to downtown NYC and the rest of the city, as residents can access the 4, 5, 6, L, N, Q, and R trains. Not only does the area boast a gorgeous public park ideal for filming, but the area serves as a gateway to a number of neighboring areas that are equally stunning, including the Flatiron District, Chelsea, Greenwich Village, and Gramercy.

Union Square is the site of many NYFA student projects alongside numerous television shows that film there due to the heavy and diverse flow of people. It has been seen in such classic films as Citizen Kane and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

Tribeca

Tribeca is a fashionable, trendy residential neighborhood with a highly affluent population. Many of the streets are lined with boutique shops and high-end restaurants such as Nobu, Chanterelle and Bouley. Tribeca is also home to the Tribeca Film Festival. The neighborhood is a frequent filming location for movies, including the 1984 hit movie Ghostbusters, which took place in a Tribeca firehouse.

Times Square

The setting for countless independent and Hollywood movies, Time Square has served as something of a cultural and economic barometer regarding the changes Manhattan has undergone. Located at the meeting point of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and extending from West 42^nd to West 47^th streets, Times Square is often the first image one calls to mind when thinking of New York City, which makes it no surprise that is one of the most visited tourist attractions in the world.

Once considered to be the worst area of the city due to crime and prostitution—as exemplified in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy—Times Square underwent a commercial renaissance during the Giuliani administration with the closing of the majority of pornographic theatres and bringing in such international brands as Disney to open up flagship stores. Now primarily a tourist attraction and commercial district, Times Square still offers countless opportunities for filmmakers looking to capture the bright lights and bustle of New York City.

Chinatown

Boasting the largest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, Chinatown can be found in Manhattan with the Lower East Side and Little Italy serving as its borders. Cantonese businessman Ah Ken was the first Chinese individual to immigrate to Chinatown in the 1840s, but the area soon exploded as a wave of Chine immigrants were drawn to the area following increased racial discrimination on the West Coast.

Today, the area is home to between 90,000 and 100,000 Chinese residents and is a mecca for both tourists and aficionados of Chinese culture who can explore the area’s seemingly countless grocers, restaurants, and street vendors. With an atmosphere and energy that can cause one to momentarily forget that he or she is even in New York, Chinatown is an ideal filming location whether one is looking to create a facsimile of China itself or capture a wholly singular pace and culture.

East Village

Surrounded by Greenwich Village, Gramercy Park, and Stuyvesant Town, the East Village first came to prominence in the late 1960s when artists, musicians, students, and hippies gravitated to the area for its cheap rent and Beatnik culture. While recent years has seen increasing rent and gentrification diluting the diverse and vibrant culture, it remains a lively area where New York University students call home and such legendary steets as St. Marks Place retain their counter-cultural vibe—though the transformation of legendary punk rock club CBGB’s into a retail store did mark a substantial change in the area’s vibe.

While many of the area’s former artistic residents have made the migration to cheaper neighborhoods in Brookyln, the East Village retains an ineffable bohemian character, even in light of the many changes the neighborhood has experienced. A boon for filmmakers, many of the area’s original buildings have been retained, creating a character that filmmakers looking for a “real” New York City neighborhood are eager to film in. Just ask Spike Lee who shot his 1970s period piece Son of Sam in the neighborhood in 1998; viewers of the movie would think that nothing has changed since the 1970s due to its classic architecture and independent spirit.

Coney Island

A peninsula located in southern Brooklyn, Coney Island is located adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean and sports a storied history that makes it a true one-of-a-kind locale, even by New York standard. As Coney Island became easy to reach, the area transformed into a resort destination following the American Civil War, with the first of the peninsula’s iconic carousels constructed in 1876. In 1927, the Cyclone roller coaster was built and still remains one of the country’s oldest wooden roller coasters.

Over the next century, Coney Island became a flashpoint for disagreements over whether to keep the area like a park or build up the growing residential and commercial properties, arguably culminating in Mayor Guiliani’s ordering that the legendary Thunderbolt roller coast be torn down in 1994. In the past decade, the peninsula has undergone a fresh round of funding and development, with the area’s substantial history of amusement parks being revived as Luna Park.

With so much going on in Coney Island, especially during the summer, it is an ideal location for shooting films with such legendary events as The Mermaid Parade making for the perfect backdrop for a scene. It’s little surprise that such legendary New York movies like Paper Moon, Annie Hall, and The Warriors have used Coney Island as their backdrop.

Harlem

Located in the northern part of Manhattan—“Across 110^th St.” anyone?—Harlem has traditionally been viewed as a culturally rich African-American nexus. However, Spanish Harlem located on the east side of the neighborhood is also home to a prodigious Latin American population and culture.

Beginning in the 1920s, the area was home to what is known as the “Harlem Renaissance” in which its African-American residents were responsible for remarkable achievements in music, literature, theatre, and more. Such landmarks include the Apollo Theater, the Cotton Club, Sylvia’s Soul Food, Frederick Douglass Circle, and much more. In the 1980s, the area underwent another renaissance due to the invaluable contributions its residents made to the development of hip-hop.

With such a diverse cultural and architectural background, it’s no surprise that numerous filmmakers have set such class films as Cotton Comes to Harlem, Malcolm X, and Sugar Hill there. Harlem offers countless sights and pockets where filmmakers will undoubtedly find inspiration.

The Hamptons

Composed of a number of villages and hamlets throughout the towns of Southampton and East Hampton, the Hamptons are located on the far east of Long Island. Known in popular culture as weekend seaside vacation spot for wealthy New Yorkers, the Hamptons is also noted for its stunning real estate, rolling countryside, and breathtaking bridges.

For filmmakers looking to make the trek out to scout locations, they should take the Montauk Branch of the Long Island Rail Road from New York City. Films that have been filmed in the Hamptons include the classic documentary Grey Gardens, Woody Allen’s Interiors, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and The Nanny Diaries.

Meatpacking District

Known to many TV fans due to its recurring role in Sex and the City, this area of Manhattan runs from West 14^th Street down to Gansevoort Street and from the Hudson River east over to Hudson Street. Originally the location of Fort Gansevoort, the Meatpacking District earned its name over the course of the late 19^th century as numerous slaughterhouses and packing plants sprouted up, which congealed into an area that remained prosperous until the 1960s.

As many of the slaughterhouses and packing plants closed down or went out of business, the area saw a revival in the 1990s as a number of high-end boutiques popped up around the area. The nightclubs were not far behind and to this day, the Meatpacking District remains a focal point for the city’s nightclub scene. With its industrial-chic buildings and vibrant nightlife, the Meatpacking District is an ideal location to capture different slices of New York life during both the day and night.

Brooklyn

A borough that is as diverse and vibrant as it is sprawling, Brooklyn has received increased attention in the past two decades as its reputation as being a hub for artists and creative professionals has grown considerably. However, as a quick walk through any of the borough’s neighborhoods will reveal, history and diversity are alive at every step.

The most populous of NYC’s five boroughs, Brooklyn was originally its own incorporated city until it was combined with Manhattan’s other surrounding boroughs to form the modern City of New York. Brooklyn is home to dozens of different neighborhoods, many of which are ethnic enclaves, though the racial and cultural make-up of different neighborhoods is constantly in flux. Bedford-Stuyvesant (or Bed-Stuy for short) contains one of the city’s most famous African-American communities while in north Brooklyn, Greenpoint has long been home to a vibrant Polish community that has started to migrate to Ridgewood, Queens.

One of Brooklyn’s strongest selling points as a film location is the sheer diversity of locations contained within a single borough. Filmmakers looking for an industrial backdrop might want to look at the industrial zone in Bushwick or the Brooklyn Navy Yards, while those looking to film amongst picturesque brownstones have numerous options, with neighborhoods like Park Slope and Cobble Hill being prime examples.

Author: Lynda Goodfriend, Chair, Acting Department, New York Film Academy Los Angeles

There are literally thousands of actors in Hollywood trying to “make it.” According to union statistics, approximately 80% of all actors in SAG-AFTRA are out of work at any given time.

So what do you do while you are waiting to become part of that 20%?

1. Get a job
You need to survive physically and mentally. You must be able to buy food, pay for rent, car and gas expenses, and have the “business of life” taken care of in order to have the freedom to pursue a creative career. No casting director wants to hire a desperate actor. If you come into your audition with the hope that this job will pay for your overdue rent so you won’t get evicted- well, they will see that fear and desperation, and you are not somebody they want to hire.

2. Find out what makes you different
What do you do that is unique? What makes you special? One director I know said he likes actors with a lot of skills, so that he knows what he can have them do in a scene: play drums, basketball, twirl baton, do impressions, do handstands, etc. Not that you don’t also have to act, but this opens up the potential for casting you in a role–especially for commercials.

3. Get an Agent
You really do need one. Sometimes a manager can get you initial casting interviews, but it is best to have an agent. (Managers cannot legally negotiate a job.) If you don’t have any or many professional credits, you will probably start with a smaller agency.

Sign with one who is reputable (check with SAG) and needs somebody in your category. I always feel it is better to sign with an agent and try them out for 4-6 months, and if you feel they are not helping your career move forward, then try somebody else. It is usually easier to get the second agent, since somebody has already taken a chance on you.

4. Don’t wait for your agent to get you a job
An agent I know said, “We get 10% of your salary, and you get 90%. So you should do 90% of the work.” Do everything you can to get work through friends, online casting sites, plays, and/or student films. The more you are working for you, the more your agent is willing to work for you.

5. Have a great headshot and a great demo reel- update them often
These are your number one tools. The headshot gives a casting director their first impression of you- the look, the way you do your hair, even the quality of the photo you have chosen to represent you. In my opinion, if you are going to spend money on your career, spend it on a great headshot. You usually do get what you pay for. The other important tool- your demo reel should be up to date, and have your best work in the first 30 seconds.

If you are not getting a lot of responses, change your headshot. A new look might be just the thing to get the interest of a particular casting director.

6. Keep skills sharp and develop new skills
Go to class. Just like athletes who need to train and keep in shape for competition, actors need to workout and keep their acting muscles in shape.
You also need to keep developing skills that make you more castable: dancing, singing, martial arts, playing a musical instrument or a sport. The more you know, the more you can work.

7. Work for Free
Don’t’ miss an opportunity to work. Many unpaid jobs are rewarded with future jobs and relationships that help you get future work. Work breeds work. And it’s a great ‘free’ acting class.

8. Stay healthy
You can’t be ready to work if you are unhealthy- that goes for emotional as well as physical health. Work out, do yoga, meditate, stay in good shape. Acting takes physical and mental tolls on you and you need to have stamina for the long haul, mentally and physically. Do activities that help relieve the stress of pursuing an acting career.

9. See work that inspires you
See as much of other actors’ work as you can. Watch films: contemporary and classical. See plays. Know the work of other actors- see how high the bar is.

10. Be prepared
Be prepared to perform at any time. Have a couple of great monologues in your back pocket- comedy and drama. (See Denis McCourt’s article, “Oh No! Not Another Article About Audition Monologues”). Always carry pictures and resumes (stapled together) in your car. Have a business card printed with your headshot and contact info in your wallet.

11. Don’t be late
Ever. Never. To a job or an audition. People don’t like it when you waste their time. The expression in the Industry is “15 minutes early is on time.”

12. Don’t complain
Don’t complain, nobody is listening. If you want a job that provides security, do something else. Only be in this business because you can’t live NOT being in it.

13. Don’t quit
Self-explanatory. Don’t quit. Never, ever. There is an old saying “Out of every 3 actors, one will make it. Not because of Talent or Looks, but because the other two give up.” This is very true, but multiply that by thousands. One in every thousand perhaps has the persistence and dedication to keep at it. Just hang in there- the next job is just around the corner. In the meantime, go to class, go take a hike, go learn to play violin. It’s all in the name of Acting.

Hone your acting skills and gain practical experience acting in front of a camera with our variety of Acting for Film workshops spanning 1 to 12 weeks. Visit our Acting for Film Workshops page to find a program that suits your interests and schedule.

Author: Neal Weisman, Co-Chair, Producing Department, New York Film Academy

It is a core principle that producers must own their projects. In order to move successfully through the producing process, finance must be raised. A common form of film finance is equity investment. In exchange for cash, the investor will receive some ownership of the project. Before producers can give away partial ownership, they must first own their project.

Similarly, at a certain point, producers will sell the distribution and/or broadcast rights to a project. That’s the whole point, to have audiences see our work. Again, before selling something, we must own it first.

In order to own a project, a producer must acquire the film and television rights. While a producer cannot own an idea, we can own a literary property. A producer can simply purchase the film and television rights to an existing script. We can also commission the writing of a screenplay; inherent in any writing deal is the fact that the producer will own the script, as a result of paying writing fees to the screenwriter. In the case where a project is to be developed based on an already existing piece of underlying material (a book, a play, a video game, a person’s life), we can purchase the film and television rights from the creator of the underlying material.

How much do we pay for the film and television rights? We usually calculate the purchase price as a % of the project’s production budget. The industry standard is around 2%, but this will vary according to the value of the underlying material. A best selling book will have greater value than an unpublished manuscript. As the purchase price can be a major cost outlay, we usually wait until the first day of production to actually buy the rights. In order to create a path to purchasing film and television rights, we arrange for an option period—an amount of time during which we have the exclusive ability to make the purchase. Producers can expect to pay an option fee (around 10% of the purchase price, depending on the value of the material) for this option period.

An exclusive option to purchase the film and television rights is the mechanism by which producers can own their projects.

Want to know more about the financial management skills that the top producers in the industry use to create cinematic works of art? Here at NYFA’s Producing School, we teach these fundamental lessons to our students to ensure that we are helping create the elite producers of tomorrow.

Author: Glynis Rigsby Chair, Acting Department, New York Film Academy

With the massive success of shows such as American Horror Story, Dexter, and The Walking Dead, television programming and productions have begun to shift to capitalize on the upswing of popularity in serialized horror vehicles. Different from the Vampire/Werewolf craze of the earlier 2000’s, new shows such as Penny Dreadful, Salem and Bates Motel focus on the more horrifying and gruesome aspects of the genre that production by cable networks allow.

This new push towards the ‘grit’ of horror in a more serialized aspect has also brought a change in the acting style of modern horror. Previously, horror was considered a ‘camp’ genre but American Horror Story (an Emmy winning series) has drawn such heavy hitters as Jessica Lange, Angela Bassett and Kathy Bates to roles new to a genre that can now incorporate season-long arcs that allow the development of previously unseen character complexity in this genre. These new developments in modern horror allow continuous development of characters, living longer than their film counterparts and containing greater psychological complexity than ever before.

Actors traditionally known for their film work, including most recently, Timothy Dalton and Josh Hartnett, are finding success inside a blend of pulp fiction, horror comics and the winning development teams at HBO, Showtime and others. While these roles provide a challenge to actors in terms of complexity and depth, there is also the added challenge of having to act realistically amidst the blood and guts that lurk around every corner. Actors are faced with having to not only deliver an emotionally truthful scene, but to also believably shriek and scream when they’re stabbed at the end of it. Prosthetics and gallons of fake blood can take a lot of getting used to for an actor, and with the current wave of modern TV horror, it’s something that’s sure to be around for a while.

Author: Jim Jennewein, Chair, Screenwriting Department, New York Film Academy Los Angeles

What are the two top industry trends that most affect the lives and careers of screenwriters today? The new dynamics of television and the ever-changing landscape of new media.

In short, digital has rewritten the rules.

In the past five years, mostly thanks to the popularity of new web-based digital media platforms, there has been a marked increase in those buying new original content. Now, in addition to all the old traditional broadcast television networks and the pay cable and basic cable networks, the streaming platforms like Hulu, Amazon and Netflix are buying original series as well—a change that bodes well for writers. Not only are these streaming services finding critical and ratings success with these shows, the series themselves are redefining the way people watch—and emotionally engage—with series television. Some even say that the Emmy-winning success of Netflix’s flagship hit House of Cards, with Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, marks the end of so-called “appointment television” itself.

SVOD—streaming video on-demand—is finally here and finally changing our viewing habits in a big way. Watching what you want, when you want, and where you want! That’s the mantra that consumers of filmed entertainment are chanting now, and the big entertainment conglomerates are listening. And it’s not only viewing habits that are changing—there is real evidence that what viewers expect from storytellers is changing too.

Weaned on the trailblazing hit shows of pay-cablers HBO and Showtime, television viewers have long since shown a real appetite for subscription-based ad-free television. Now, with the advent of instant downloads and binge-viewing, viewers are consuming television differently than ever before, and showing more interest in—and a growing demand for—a far more diverse range of television fare. Limited-run series (Sherlock on BBC America). Quirky single-camera half-hour comedies (Louie on FX). Open-ended procedurals with serialized story arcs that span a whole season (AMC’s The Killing). Series driven more by character than by plot (HBO’s Girls). While the movie business still seems allergic to investing in period pieces, television seems to embrace them wholeheartedly. Think Deadwood, Boardwalk Empire, Rome, Copper, Downton Abbey, Mr. Selfridge. For writers, this new openness to a wider variety of stories—and the worlds the stories are rooted in—spells a new kind of storytelling freedom, the chance to explore subjects and time periods previously untouched.

So if you have a world that fascinates you—a period of history, a curious subculture, a character—jump in and start writing. There’s never been a better time to be a television writer—even if viewers watch your show on a laptop, tablet or a mobile device! (Where once it was a limited window of a few short months, the buying of television pilot scripts is now a year-round business, too. Another good thing for writers.)

And now after you write it, you don’t even need a network to say yes. You can shoot it, edit it and distribute it yourself by posting it online—either on YouTube or Vimeo or a whole host of other user-generated video sites—building your own fan base in the process (and possibly leveraging that into real ad revenue). Whether it’s a traditional length movie or your own web series, the digital revolution has put the means of production in the creative person’s hands like never before. In the past year alone, several projects that began as cheaply-produced web series have been picked up by various TV networks and found their way to television.

Even if you are a writer of movies and have no interest in television per se, the new digital technology and the digital distribution platforms create opportunities for writers to produce and direct their own films and sell them straight to these SVOD services.

Content is king, as they say, and no one can create content like writers can. The New York Film Academy Screenwriting Department believes in empowering writers with all the tools of craft and the practical skills necessary to master storytelling—in television, film and new media—and fulfill their vision as creative artists.