Broadway between 42nd and 47th Streets is a plaza now, and Seventh Avenue is still open to traffic through the middle of the square.
What Times Square looks like
Broadway crosses at a shallow angle between 42nd and 47th Streets, and the long bowtie block between them is closed to cars. Gray granite pavers run down the plaza where the road used to be, with backless benches along the edges. Seventh Avenue itself stays open, taxis and buses running straight through the crossing.
Every building facing the plaza is covered in LED screens that run the height of the wall and continue around the corners, covering entire facades above the third or fourth floor. City rules set a minimum area of lit signage for each foot of frontage, and the screens stay lit from dusk until one in the morning. Ground floor storefronts sit below them, food carts under umbrellas and chain retail behind glass at every corner.
is the triangle above 45th Street, where the TKTS booth sits under a bank of red glass steps and a statue of Father Duffy stands at the corner. Crowds fill the plaza shoulder to shoulder on an ordinary afternoon, held to marked lanes by steel bollards and signs reading PEDESTRIAN FLOW ZONE, KEEP MOVING.
Most of the Broadway theatres sit on the side streets rather than the plaza itself. Eight stand on between Broadway and , their vertical signs stacked one after another down the block. runs from that row through to West 44th Street. The at Broadway and 46th Street keeps its 1926 lettering cut under the cornice, with a steel screen frame standing on the roof above it.
Shot in Times Square
Vanilla Sky emptied the square for one Sunday morning in 2000. Birdman used a working Broadway theatre and the crowd outside it.
Vanilla Sky, 2001
On 12 November 2000 the production shut down Broadway and Seventh Avenue between West 42nd and West 47th Streets for the early hours of a Sunday and shot David Aames running through an empty Times Square. None of it is computer generated. The news ticker was showing the Bush and Gore election count at the time, so the NASDAQ sign was changed in post production to keep the film from being dated. Street View
Birdman, 2014
Riggan Thomson stages his play at the St. James Theatre, 246 West 44th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. The stage and the auditorium are the real theatre, while the dressing rooms and backstage corridors are sets built at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens. When Riggan is locked out in his underwear he runs the block to Seventh Avenue and back through the square, shot after midnight with extras close around Michael Keaton and real bystanders further out. Street View
A curved LED screen runs the length of the wall on the corner building above Shaftesbury Avenue at Piccadilly Circus, showing ads for Coca-Cola, Samsung and McDonald's. Piccadilly is still a working roundabout rather than a closed plaza, so traffic circles through the middle of every wide shot. Hold on the screen wall itself or shoot from a raised angle that keeps the roundabout out of frame, since moving cars are the fastest way to give the location away. The Eros statue at the circus is its own landmark and is worth keeping out of a composition standing in for Duffy Square. Try searching curved LED screen wall now.
Shibuya's scramble crossing sends as many as three thousand pedestrians through the intersection on one green light, with video screens on the buildings around it playing the same part the towers here do. The crossing itself is a five way diagonal scramble rather than a bowtie, and the buildings ringing it run lower. Frame tight on the crowd and the screens rather than the crossing's own road markings, since the diagonal walk pattern is the fastest tell in a wide shot. Keep the camera below roofline, because the buildings around the crossing top out well short of a Broadway tower. Try searching video screens on buildings now.
Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada
Casino towers along the Strip carry animated screens and marquees at a comparable scale, and pedestrian traffic is heavy enough that the resorts built raised footbridges over the boulevard in the 1990s to keep walkers off the road. The boulevard itself stays open to six lanes of traffic, wider than a plaza closed to cars. Shoot from a sidewalk or footbridge rather than the road and keep the six lane boulevard out of frame, since open traffic is the fastest tell. The Strip's casino signage runs from ground level up the building faces, so a mid height frame on a resort marquee holds the illusion best. Try searching casino towers with screens now.
