How do they get tourists and residents in places like NYC to co-operate while shooting movies?
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NYPD. They shut down and use crowd control tactics on any area that’s filming. I don’t mean riot cops but barriers, uniformed officers, etc.
If you’re talking about people in the background of a shot, then they are hired to be there as “extras.” If you’re talking about how they keep people out of the way they have to notify the public in advance of things like, street closures & parking restrictions by posting signs a few days before. Then they have officers policing perimeters. If it is a really high traffic area they often have to accommodate for the public passing through between takes etc.
Big shoots? They might shut down the streets. Pyrotechnics. Car chases. Safety issues.
Generally speaking, production assistants ask people who might be entering the shot to wait a minute since the take will probably take 30 seconds. Legally you can walk thru a film shoot on a public street. People are shockingly obedient when you have a safety vest on.
Guerilla filmmaking is when you ignore the rules and just make your movie.
In addition to what others said about the police blocking areas off, movie studios have to pay the city a lot of money for permits to shut down streets. How much one costs depends on how busy the location is, how long they’ll need it, what time of day and so on.
Filming in a place like NYC can get so expensive that unless there’s a really good reason that you need to be there, studios would rather just film in another city and throw in a few aerial shots of Manhattan between scenes.
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