Annie

NYPD cars, news trucks, and choppers converged on Liberty State Park this week to track down an escapee. But this was no ordinary escaped convict. This was an escaped orphan.

Yes, a very famous orphan: Annie.

Will Smith and Jay-Z (who clearly has a fondness for the movie’s score) are producinga modern-day version of the famous musical.

It’s not clear what scene they’re filming in the park, but actors Dorian Missick andTracie Thoms appear to be driving little orphan Quvenzhane Wallis somewhere. Check out the rig set up on the roof of the old station wagon. It allows someone to drive the vehicle while lighting and camera gear, mounted to the hood and windshield, capture the action.

The crew had two choppers — A Bell 429 to actually appear in the movie, and an AStar 350 operated by Wings Air Helicopters. The latter was outfitted with aPictorvision gyro-stabilized camera system to shoot everything happening on the ground.

Maybe we’ll see some of our boats in the background when the movie comes out next year — on Christmas Day 2014.

“Action!” on the East River

As part of a UK film production, the crew of New York Media Boat spent all night working both boats on the East River. “ROLL SOUND, ROLL PICTURE” .. “ROLLING” .. “ACTION!”

While Aperture served as a camera platform hosting Cinematographer Till Neumann and team,  Searider is the on-screen boat. In the picture below, Till films the action from the bow, with a RED camera. In this scene, the two actors had just stolen the boat and are joyriding in front of the Manhattan skyline.

The goal of the evening was to shoot three scenes for the trailer of  An Evening with Donald Kempinski, written and directed by Timothy Murray of Little Fella Films. It’s a Staten Island Ferry captain’s tale of acceptance and reconciliation. “CUT! TAKE IT FROM THE TOP” calls Tim over the radio and we reposition the boats for Scene 13, Take 2.

Henrik Lundqvist: King and Captain

A few years back, New York Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist starred in an episode of MSG’s The Game 365, giving host Fran Healy a tour of his native Sweden. Much of the second half of the interview was filmed on a yacht, cruising the waters outside of Gothenburg. Lundqvist said he didn’t own a boat there, but like any good Scandinavian, he had a deep love for the fjords and had accumulated plenty of sea time on friends’ vessels.

So, then, what better follow-up than some seafaring on the Hudson River? On Tuesday, Healy and Lundqvist boarded the 43-foot Beneteau Gemini at 79th Street Boat Basin to continue their conversation for another episode of the show. New York Media Boat hosted two MSG cameramen charged with getting wide shots of Healy and Lundqvist soaking up the sun and salt. (Since our RIB Aperture wasn’t available that day, we owe many thanks to Halcyon Sailing for loaning out Protector.)

One of the best-dressed and most seen athletes in New York, Lundqvist fit right in on a luxury yacht. His white button-down (top button unbuttoned, of course) tucked into his dark denim jeans with the help of a massive belt buckle emblazoned with the letter H. A dive watch and his classic stubbled face made it even easier to blend in as a sailor.

The shoot took about two hours, but few of the details from the interview made their way across the water.When the boats finally docked, everyone had a few minutes of downtime and conversations started.

The Swede was surprised to hear another Scandinavian name when he was introduced to Bjoern. He said he knew Flensburg, the northern German town on a fjord of the Baltic Sea where Bjoern grew up. The conversation was quick but we managed to snap a photo before Lundqvist was ushered off to the next event.

The episode is set to air at the beginning of the regular season in October.

Hollywood in NY Harbor

About two weeks ago I was running ‘Aperture’ along Manhattan’s financial district. Passing North Cove Marina it wasn’t the multi-million dollar boat that caught my eye — those type of yachts are always docked there — but a big orange cherry-picker with a huge diffuser seemed out of place. I also noticed a large camera crane and people dressed in black soI docked at a nearby pier, where a security guard explained that they were filming ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, and Matthew McConaughey. A quick check with the IMDb database revealed it to be a Martin Scorsese film with the following storyline: “In The Wolf of Wall Street DiCaprio would play Belfort, a Long Island penny stockbroker who served 20 months in prison for refusing to cooperate in a massive 1990s securities fraud case that involved widespread corruption on Wall Street and in the corporate banking world, including mob infiltration.” The streets leading to that part of North Cove Marina were closed off, but with my 70-200mm lens I could clearly see DiCaprio throwing fake money off the yachts’s stern during a ‘take’. According to IMDb the movie will be released in 2013 and should you watch it, keep an eye out for a grey RIB in the background of the scene.