Spider-Man 2 in Rochester

Let's hope the movie version looks better than this guy!

If you are from Rochester, New York, where nothing much exciting ever happens, you know that the big news the past week or so has been the filming of the new Amazing Spider-man 2 movie. Being my usual less than excitable self, I have to admit that at first I thought it was more of an inconvenience than something to get worked up about.  Coworkers of mine actually applied to be movie extras in the film but did not get picked.  There was a woman in our Accounting department that got the "green light", but she didn't want to commit to 5:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. every day for the duration.

Once they started filming, the Rochester Police department presence downtown really skyrocketed. Every morning getting off of the expressway, traffic would crawl.  It is the same going home every night.  For some reason the Police decided that we are no longer able to navigate through the traffic lights and stop signs on our own.  Every intersection I go through has a cop stationed there, directing traffic.  It tends to make more of a mess of the traffic patterns than usual.  I understand why they are stationed where the roads are blocked off, but having them at every intersection (even the ones farther away from the action) seems overkill.




The filming itself is very tedious.  It seems to be a lot of time spent setting things up, and then once they are ready, they film and re-film over and over again.  The cars go forward and then they back up into position again and then go forward and then back up, and this is done for hours. Every time I had a moment to look out the window, I caught the "backing up" part. I never saw the forward motion.

So far we've seen lots of fake NYPD cop cars.

We've seen a Daily Bugle news truck and an OSCORP armored car.

They've changed Main Street into 57th Street, and Exchange Street is now 8th Avenue.

For the big explosion-crash scene they filmed the other day, they spent the entire day setting things up.  Here they are moving some of the vehicles around.

This is what was involved in the big crash scene.  There was almost a disaster - the truck veered off the road onto the sidewalk and took out a concrete planter and a park bench along Main Street.  That wasn't supposed to happen.

This is the front of my building - the Crossroads building - and the "decoration" they put on the front for the shooting of the scene.

Next week we hear they will be turning Pindle Alley into Chinatown.  We probably won't get to see any of that.  The alley runs beside the Sister Cities Parking garage where I park. We've already been warned that parking spaces in the garage will be limited.  The alley is pretty gross at the moment.  I don't envy that crew having to clean that mess up so that they can use it for filming!

SOURCE:

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-spiderman-city-image22238958