A film shoot that involves major street closures can be a nightmare for location management. Heavy traffic, angry locals and other unforeseen events can cause many problems for a production. All the while the location manager must take into account both authenticity and economics. But a resourceful location manager can figure out how to stay on budget while keeping headaches to a minimum. A look at “Spiderman III” shows how.

Subbing for the Big Apple

For both logistical and artistic reasons, “Spiderman III” was filmed in three locations, Los Angeles, Cleveland and, of course, New York. While the Los Angeles filming happened indoors, the other two locales involved major street closures.

Because the story is set in New York, director Sam Raimi felt that it was crucial to film outdoor scenes in NYC. However given the complicated nature of the “city that never sleeps,” it was impossible to do it all there. So for a scene that involved a 20-block closure for ten days of filming, they went with Cleveland as a substitute.

Cleveland Prepares for Spiderman’s Arrival  

Unlike other places that are accustomed to production, Cleveland lacked set policies for dealing with the particular requests from the production team. The city nevertheless cooperated impressively with the production team, according to Peter Martorano, the Cleveland location manager for “Spiderman III.”

The demands of this shoot meant spending much time getting the city ready, so Martorano met with Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and his staff on several occasions to prepare. Many of its citizens needed to be educated on what it entailed to close down a major corridor of downtown Cleveland.

Other preparations involved repainting the crosswalks to look like New York’s, removing power lines and traffic signals for stunts, and re-routing increased traffic during two major sports events. (The shooting schedule overlapped with the start of the MLB season for the Indians as well as the NBA playoffs for the Cavaliers.)

Despite the advanced preparation, there were still some last minute bumps in the road that, literally, needed to be smoothed. The day before shooting the crew found that the condition of Euclid Avenue, ragged with potholes, would prevent the precision driving that was required for the scene. They asked if the city could have a section of the street repaved.

“The city delivered again,” said Martorano. “While the crew was sleeping, the city paved areas of Euclid Ave from 9 p.m. – 6 a.m. Euclid Ave was ready at call time. “

Warm Welcome from Locals

“There really was no backlash,” Said Carmody. “People were excited about hosting it.”

While business owners typically want to make up for lost revenue caused by street closures, the production paid no fees to any private owners of the surrounding properties. Nor were they troubled by any self-appointed community gadflies rallying the locals to complain about the disruption. In contrast, Cleveland residents seemed to delight in the novelty of hosting a big Hollywood production.

“In New York or LA you probably wouldn't even notice someone dressed like Spider Man being pulled behind an armored truck,” said Cleveland blogger Hannah Fritzman, who witnessed the production from a nearby office window.  “But in Cleveland, Spider Man became a part of each of us and we became a part of Spider Man.”

Motivated Reception

Cleveland’s appetite for production has motivated the city to bend over backwards for production. The city hopes that production dollars can offset recent job loss in the manufacturing sector.  

“It's important to understand how hungry the Greater Cleveland community is to host this kind of business,” said Carmody.

The efforts of the city resulted in gushing praise from Raimi, as well as the location managers and crew.

“The City of Cleveland is the best city I have ever worked in,” said Martorano. “Its citizens are awesome too. They are very proud of their city!” 

When Filming the Real Thing

For the scenes shot in NYC, the production’s New York location manager John Fedynich undertook the responsibility of finding viable places for filming. So Fedynich had to find areas in Manhattan with light weekend traffic.

“There are areas like Downtown Manhattan near Wall Street that really cater to the Monday-Friday business people so weekends tend to be easy to use for the shoot,” said Fedynich.

But the city as a whole is always active, so Fedynich still had his work cut out for him. He carefully arranged the shoots so that they had as little impact on the city as possible. The crane accident scene, for instance, required the closure of a 14-block stretch of 6th Avenue, so the scene was shot Memorial Day from 6–10 in the morning. Fedynich also had to avoid street fairs, parades and other film productions that had already been scheduled.

Despite all the costs and complications, filming in LA or New York can be advantageous under the right circumstances. “LA has advantages because more street and freeway closures occur for filming,” said Martorano. “By this I mean there are procedures in place to accommodate the production company.”

And although certain circumstances require the hiring of a CHP officer, (going rate of about $70 per hour) Martorano says that it is a fair price for the safety and preparedness of the city. Similar procedures are in place in New York, along with similarly high costs.

However, this kind of filming in either LA or NY would have to be done on weekends, stretching out the shooting schedule over a period of weeks. Martorano remembered working on a similarly challenging Los Angeles street scene for the 1995 movie “Heat.” For that project, they had to close down several blocks of 5th Street in downtown Los Angeles.

Martorano says that such a shoot would be unlikely now because of increased prices and emphasis on the bottom line. And unlike Cleveland, where no private owners were paid, many Los Angeles businesses would require payment, making the costs prohibitive.

“Many studios today want to spend less on massive closures,” said Martorano about the practice of finding out-of-state locations. “Bottom line is the budget.”


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