Really Local Filming

It can’t get much closer than this.

On the way home I happened to come across some more filming in my neighborhood. (Yes, I know, I see it all the time around here but I’m still intrigued by it all.) So when I got home I decided to grab the camera and ride my bike down to the location and see what was up.

When I arrived, I asked a police officer what they were filming and he told me it was a commercial. Kind of figured as they had all directions around the intersection blocked to all traffic. A few minutes after my arrival they were just about ready to shoot a scene so I sat around and watched.

ACTION!

A tan Nissan Altima passed through the intersection while a light blue VW Golf (I believe), driven by a man in a dog suit (which couldn’t have been fun on this hot day) zoomed by on the other side of the street, hopped the curb, and sheared off a prop fire hydrant in the process. Water shot into the air–and then things got interesting.

A few seconds later, the entire crew went running to the intersection where the fake hydrant was sheared. From what a witness on the other side of the street told me, when the car hopped the curb and hit the hydrant, it apparently also struck an actor that was in “his” front yard picking up his newspaper for the scene.

Within minutes, Long Beach Fire arrived to tend to the actor. Pictures of the event are below and via Slide since I haven’t renewed by Flickr Pro account, which I will do this Friday.

I don’t know the extent of the actor’s injuries but I hope they come out of this okay as the sound of the car crashing was pretty brutal…