Ask The Producer: Shooting in Central Park
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QUESTION:
I'm looking for some advice on a shoot we'd like to do in Central Park. It would be a 2 day shoot with both days taking place in the park, full days. The locations we’re anticipating are a basic park bench in a nice open area, one of the cafes, and the carousel. It wouldn’t be a HUGE crew, but it would be pretty standard size, say 25-30 folks.
The permissions process outlined on the website seems to be pretty straight forward, in terms of submitting an application, making a donation, etc. The insight I’m hoping you can lend is how quickly we could expect to get through the permissions process, the level of donation you think would be appropriate, whether a higher donation gets a quicker result, etc. Plus just any tips you have.
THE PRODUCER ANSWERS:
Central Park is always a highly requested location, so the biggest piece of advice is get your request in to the park as soon as possible!
$1,250-$1750 for donation per day for a pharmaceutical commercial print shoot. If this were an editorial client, or video, this would warrant a different donation amount.
NOTHING facilitates a quicker permission, but with the new staff turnover this year, they have been more responsive. Expect a response within 2 days, after which you will need a NYC permit as well. Plan on getting park approval no later than 3 days before the shoot day, as you also need that NYC city permit. Also - you can't get a NYC permit without the Park approval first.
By the way - you may think this is complicated, but keep in mind that Prospect Park in Brooklyn can prove even trickier! You're less likely to get a response, the demands are greater. Overall, more of a production pain to deal with.
Carousel:
The carousel is actually operated by Donald Trump and they charge a lot - plan on a range of $5-10K depending on hours and if they have a party booked, etc.
Cafe in Park:
The chain cafe Le Pain Quotidien is privately owned and I would suggest dealing with them directly. Their cost is TBD as I have not shot with them before.
Might be best (cheapest and least restrictive) to allocate the gated area over the ice skating rink - which is paved and with a pavilion & can be propped out as a cafe with tables & chairs. Quick fix!
Photos by Adrian Alston
There's a particular kind of confusion that shows up in production offices lately, and it isn't about budgets or call times. It's about a handful of terms — usage rights, likeness rights, digital replicas, AI training, derivative content — that have started appearing in the same paragraph of a contract, often used as though they mean roughly the same thing.
They don't. And the gap between them is quickly becoming one of the more consequential distinctions in commercial production.
This vocabulary comes largely from entertainment law, a world most photographers, stylists, producers, and models were never trained to navigate. It's being absorbed into advertising and commercial contracts faster than most of the industry has had time to build a shared, plain-language understanding of what it actually covers. The result is a lot of very careful people signing very specific language without a clear sense of what they've agreed to.
So it's worth slowing down and taking each term on its own.