Film Crew

Robert L. Oatman does executive protection - and no, he isn't a beefy, brainless bodyguard. He is a fit, trim and congenial figure who likes to wear crisp suits and who works with his team to draw up complex plans for shielding people they're paid to protect. It's a point of professional pride that none of his clients have ever been attacked on his watch over the past 20 years. "If you've got to touch your gun, it means you've made a mistake," said Oatman, 62, whose R.L. Oatman & Associates Inc. is based in Towson.

In this video, President Obama and Maryland's senior  - sorry, make that junior - senator, Ben Cardin, pop into the Texas Ribs and BBQ in Clinton. You can read more about the president and senator's visit on the always informative Obama Foodorama website. At just about 1:05 in the video , a woman starts barking for some people to push some back some other people, including the Secret Service. Is she with the president, the restaurant the film crew?

A Baltimore police officer who was killed in October when his cruiser slammed into the back of a fire engine was speeding at 71 mph and most likely was distracted by a film crew on the opposite side of a highway, the final investigative report concludes. Officer Thomas Portz Jr., 32, did not suffer a medical problem, and officials found no mechanical defects in the police car, a 2009 Chevrolet Impala. The report says Portz, a 10-year veteran assigned to the Western District, was not wearing his seatbelt.

If you've seen a black SUV getting towed up Charles Street Tuesday with an attractive brunette and driver still inside, rest assured they are not the latest victims of Baltimore's municipal towing scandal . That's Julianne Moore in the back seat, playing former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in "Game Change," an HBO movie about the 2008 presidential election being filmed in Baltimore . The actor who plays her driver can't be trusted to...

In what New York City officials are calling a first, the city police department and Mayor's Film Office have paved the way for Columbia Pictures' big-budget "Money Train" to shoot in Times Square on New Year's Eve.Approximately 300 extras will be joining the 300,000-plus throng of revelers and multitude of news and broadcast crews expected tomorrow night at one of the world's most celebrated NewYear's Eve gatherings.The shoot won't involve the film's stars, Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, but will capture footage for a key chase sequence at the end of the film when Mr. Snipes, a good-guy decoy cop, chases his adversaries on a motorcycle.

All the Peabody Conservatory library had to do was look its elegant self yesterday while a film crew set up lights, cameras and microphones to shoot a romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.The landmark on tree-lined Mount Vernon Street was the centerpiece for two scenes with Ms. Ryan, who plays a reporter at The Sun destined to meet Mr. Hanks, an architect in Seattle, at the end of the movie.The crew will be filming "Sleepless in Seattle" in Baltimore through Thursday. Mr. Hanks is not in town.

Only in the film industry do four days equal 15 minutes.Filming on a 15-minute Internal Revenue Service video, designed to help small-business owners understand their tax obligations, wound up in downtown Westminster yesterday.Cast and crew from Action Productions Inc. of New York, Cooper Productions of Columbia and Steve Yeager Films of Baltimore began work on the project Monday."It's sort of like watching grass grow," the sound technician commented as the cast and crew taped a three-minute scene for the fourth time at the law offices of Lennon and Miller on Main Street.

SHARPSBURG -- With musket barrels gleaming and flags flying, a long column of blue-clad soldiers snaked down the hillside, then paused at the edge of a country lane.Lying in heaps on the road before them were the bodies of the "dead" and "dying," alongside guns, canteens and haversacks. "Wounded" men writhed on the ground.And the cameras rolled, capturing scenes for a movie that will be shown at the national historic battlefield and will be part of a television documentary.No one had seen that sight in 135 years - not on this once-blood-soaked Civil War battleground where more American casualties occurred than on any other single day in U.S. military history.

Tony White paces across the back of the Baltimore Convention Center, flipping open his cellular phone to call his office. "Carol," says the spokesman for Mayor Martin O'Malley, "have you heard from the NBC people?" Today is a big day for the O'Malley administration. A television news crew is en route from Washington to film a profile of Baltimore's boy wonder politician to air next month on the "Today Show" during the Democratic National Convention. The piece is one of several that will highlight future players in each political party.

In this video, President Obama and Maryland's senior  - sorry, make that junior - senator, Ben Cardin, pop into the Texas Ribs and BBQ in Clinton. You can read more about the president and senator's visit on the always informative Obama Foodorama website. At just about 1:05 in the video , a woman starts barking for some people to push some back some other people, including the Secret Service. Is she with the president, the restaurant the film crew?

A Baltimore police officer who was killed in October when his cruiser slammed into the back of a fire engine was speeding at 71 mph and most likely was distracted by a film crew on the opposite side of a highway, the final investigative report concludes. Officer Thomas Portz Jr., 32, did not suffer a medical problem, and officials found no mechanical defects in the police car, a 2009 Chevrolet Impala. The report says Portz, a 10-year veteran assigned to the Western District, was not wearing his seatbelt.

A 250-year-old farmhouse, stuck at the end of a long, rutted driveway, with creaking doors, splintered stairs, snakeskins in the basement and a mysterious gaping hole hidden beneath one of the outbuildings. Sounds like the perfect setting for a horror film, right? That's what the makers of "The Possession" thought, too, when they first saw the Hagerstown home that location scouts found for their 20-day film shoot, wrapping this weekend in Western Maryland. And they were right. "This house had its own creepy kind of things that it brought along," says director Eduardo Sanchez, a Marylander who shot to fame as the first-time writer-director of 1999's "The Blair Witch Project," which brought in more than $140 million at the U.S. box office.

A Baltimore police officer died and four firefighters were taken to a local hospital Wednesday after the officer's car rear-ended a parked fire engine on U.S. 40, officials said. Officer Tommy Portz, a 10-year veteran and married father of three, was pronounced dead while being taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, officials said. The 32-year-old is the third active city officer killed in less than a month. Fire Chief James Clack said that Engine 8 was dispatched to a report of an injured person in the median area of Calhoun and Franklin streets but could not locate a patient.

Robert L. Oatman does executive protection - and no, he isn't a beefy, brainless bodyguard. He is a fit, trim and congenial figure who likes to wear crisp suits and who works with his team to draw up complex plans for shielding people they're paid to protect. It's a point of professional pride that none of his clients have ever been attacked on his watch over the past 20 years. "If you've got to touch your gun, it means you've made a mistake," said Oatman, 62, whose R.L. Oatman & Associates Inc. is based in Towson.

Robert L. Oatman does executive protection - and no, he isn't a beefy, brainless bodyguard. He is a fit, trim and congenial figure who likes to wear crisp suits and who works with his team to draw up complex plans for shielding people they're paid to protect. It's a point of professional pride that none of his clients have ever been attacked on his watch over the past 20 years. "If you've got to touch your gun, it means you've made a mistake," said Oatman, 62, whose R.L. Oatman & Associates Inc. is based in Towson.

Hollywood set up shop in Baltimore County yesterday, as filming began on the latest movie to call the Baltimore area home. My One and Only, starring Renee Zellweger as a divorcee seeking a father, preferably a rich one, for her two kids, began its two-month Baltimore shoot in Upperco. For storytelling purposes, the film crew transformed a pair of shuttered businesses - one a former general store, the other a pizza place - into a '50s-era street corner. One side of the road became a gas station, the other a farmhouse, complete with a barn advertising Cayaga Flour, "The Best Bread Flour of the World."

If you've seen a black SUV getting towed up Charles Street Tuesday with an attractive brunette and driver still inside, rest assured they are not the latest victims of Baltimore's municipal towing scandal . That's Julianne Moore in the back seat, playing former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in "Game Change," an HBO movie about the 2008 presidential election being filmed in Baltimore . The actor who plays her driver can't be trusted to...

Bending over backward to accommodate Hollywood, Baltimore plans to close the Hanover Street bridge Saturday and possibly Monday so a production company can stage a scene in which a boat appears to land on the structure. The city's Department of Transportation announced yesterday that the bridge between South Baltimore and Cherry Hill will close at 3 a.m. Saturday to allow Los Angeles-based Revolution Studios to film a scene for the movie XXX: State of the Union. The span - formally called the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge - will reopen from 6 a.m. to midnight Sunday for Ravens game traffic, but then could close for another 24 hours if the film crew still needs the bridge.

Who needs to fly when you can catch a wave? Penguins, those new rock stars of the animal world, continue their winning streak with Surf's Up, an animated mockumentary that imagines a world where the famously flightless birds are as much into hanging 10 as they are into eating fish. Done in a sort of Errol Morris-meets-Endless Summer style, Surf's Up is the story of a penguin named Cody Maverick (voice of Shia LaBeouf). While being interviewed by an unseen narrator and film crew (although the occasional boom mike does slip into the frame)

Tired of being snubbed by Hollywood, Maryland legislators are moving to change the law to allow higher rebates for film productions in the state, which has been rejected as a site for shoots in favor of other locales that provide sweeter financial incentives. "The thing about this industry that we're finding is that the competition is severe, and in order to continue to compete we're going to always have to stay on the cutting edge," said Hannah Byron, assistant secretary for tourism, film and the arts.