Third Watch filming
I recently discovered that my building swipe card works for opening the back entrance to the lobby. So, I have a choice when I get out of the subway in the morning: be marginally more lazy and go through the back, or go up to Broadway and around to go through the front. The old newspaper stand in the lobby has moved into more spacious quarters located in the front of the building, and I usually stop by there on Monday mornings to pick up a new bottle of water. Yesterday was Monday.
So, I turned the corner on Broadway, and see a big sign behind the bull: “Filming Third Watch”. On the other side of Bowling Green, I could see a small crowd of spectators and a line of police cars, red lights flashing. I never watch Third Watch, so there wasn’t that much interest in seeing what was going on.
Imagine how surprised, startled and concerned I would have been if I had gone through the back entrance that morning and didn’t see the sign. About half an hour after getting to work, we hear gunfire from outside the building: bang, bang, bang. Looking out the window, you could have seen the line of police cars and a squad of ESU cops clustered just outside the Bowling Green subway station. Bang, bang, bang. But, no worries, I knew they were filming, and mentioned this to coworkers as they went to the windows.
A little while after that, people in the office noticed that there was a film crew on the roof of the building next to us (and an additional camera across the way on a ledge of 26 Broadway). They were filming a sniper shooting down on Bowling Green, with the camera behind his head and pointing down along the gun to the scene on the street, and, later, the reverse angle on a makeshift wall. With the windows open, you can hear the direction: “Action!” BANG “Action!” BANG and so on. Then the arms master has to reload the gun with blanks while the guy in black with the tattoos and do-rag — an almost archetypal bad guy, if only the good guys wore white — loitered around waiting for the next shot. And they’d do it again.
I’m not sure when they’re showing this episode, Third Watch’s big ripped-from-the-headlines sniper story.TVtome.com doesn’t have episode descriptions for the upcoming season yet. I guess from the filming schedule, it’ll be shown in the second month of the season, presumably October.