Filming is underway for The Vineyard reality show, which is getting a warm welcome in some quarters.

Bret Blakeney with 25/7 Productions told Edgartown selectmen Monday that filming started last week at a private property in Oak Bluffs for the “docusoap” reality show.

He reiterated that the premise of the ABC Family show is family-friendly; it will feature young adults between 18 and 26 years of age. “It’s their summer on the Vineyard . . . they’re interacting with the locals and making friends with them and relationships,” he said.

He also said the production is not on the scale of Jaws, the most famous example of Hollywood coming to the Island. The show will have a very small footprint and small crew, he said, and “unless you ran into us you probably wouldn’t know where we were.”

There have been glimpses of cast and crew out and about in the last week: they were spotted at State Beach and the Steamship Authority last Friday.

The show will start airing in July, and filming will be done by the end of June, Mr. Blakeney said. "It looks like summer outside but doesn’t feel like summer outside, so thank god for television,” he said. He said he and the crew are already nervous for the crowds coming in the summer months.

Mr. Blakeney said he wanted to reach out to the selectmen because of potential filming on State Beach. Filming would likely take place “as the sun’s going down, it’s getting darker, just two kids walking down the beach with a couple of cameras pointed at them,” he said.

Selectmen agreed that the filming would be okay as long as production gave the chief of police a heads-up.

And while the show has provoked derisive comment from some Vineyarders, the selectmen invited the crew to stay longer.

“Welcome, and we appreciate you coming and giving us the heads up,” selectman Arthur Smadbeck said.

“You should come back July 4,” Mr. Smadbeck added. “We have a parade, it’s a really, really, really neat parade . . . you should film the parade.”

 

For more photos of The Vineyard filming at the Steamship Authority, see our gallery: Steamship Authority Transformed into Reality Show Set.