The ending of the NFL lockout was a huge relief to all the football fans out there, including this one. Since the league is so rich it almost prints money I knew a deal would get done, but it’s good to know that the season really is around the corner. During this time, a fan can’t help but think about the beginning of previous seasons, how they felt about their team at that time, and how that team changes during each season.
The most memorable opening game for me was for the 2008 Baltimore Ravens. I’ll always remember it because it’s the only opening game I haven’t watched. Why didn’t I watch? It was because we were shooting outdoor footage for TPE, which A.) happened to be so close to M&T Bank Stadium we could hear the crowd and 2.) we had our one brush with Maryland law enforcement.
The shooting schedule for the day was in parallel to Derek Powers’ evolution from “guy who can’t control his super speed” to honest to goodness superhero. We also got bolder in our selection of roads we used for shots- starting off on small side streets, then a four lane road passing the Baltimore Sun warehouse, and finally darting through traffic on Interstate I-95. In that scene, Derek/Photon is chasing the motorcyclist who has been his crime fighting target in acts one and two. Mr. Cyclist has pissed off enough people to the point where the police are chasing him as well.
That’s how Dan wrote it in the script, but we didn’t have the money for fake police cars so we were resigned to selling the police action with sound effects. However, through either a coincidence or fate intervening, when we started shooting a real police car happened to be in the passing lane of 95! I’ve never seen a police car with that jurisdiction emblem before, so I’m going to call fate on that one. So when shooting our motorcycle rider we widened out the angle a smidge and presto, our police chase!
That was our last road shot for the day, so we headed over to a side road, parked, and patted each other on the back for a job well done. Little did we know, but that cop of unknown origin must’ve gotten in touch with the Maryland Transportation Authority Police, who sniffed us out like a bloodhound. I was fearing the worst, that he was going to throw us in jail and take the camera setup we had latched in the bed of the pickup truck. Thankfully my worry wort tendencies proved untrue, as the officer told us to film what we wanted on the side streets, but stay off the interstate. Since we just finished, no problem there!
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