Lights, Camera, Action in Aurora Highlands, Arlington Ridge
Crews filmed a Washington Nationals commercial in Georgetown and Arlington on Thursday.
Actors, camera crews and a film trailer took over Rose Park in Georgetown for part of Thursday morning and then moved to the Aurora Highlands and Arlington Ridge neighborhoods for the afternoon. The Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) was filming scenes for a new Washington Nationals promo.
MASN is a regional sports network owned by the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles that carries both Nats and Orioles games live.
In the morning, a group of young boys in red, white and blue attire and Nats baseball hats were playing a game of pick-up baseball with their "dads" while the "moms" cheered them on. If not for the film crews with their cameras running alongside the players, it might have been a typical afternoon at Rose Park.
Eric Hunsaker, the art director for the shoot — and erstwhile catcher in the baseball game — said the theme for the commercial is "your town, your team."
Thursday afternoon, the shoot moved to 16th Street South in Arlington. Hunsaker described one scene as actors portraying a grandfather and grandson "walking on a beautifully sun-dappled street discussing pitching technique."
"We're scouting a bunch of little areas for vignettes around town that show fans connected to the game," Hunsaker said about the Arlington location. "We picked it because it's beautiful. It looked like small-town America."
Most of the Arlington activity was along 16th Street South where the Aurora Highlands community meets Arlington Ridge. Specifically, they were around the South Joyce and South Kent Street intersections.
The crew was going for "a series of different looks," Hunsaker said. They shot a few scenes at Nationals Stadium Wednesday night.
Look for the commercial this summer on MASN.