Filming in public - can you photograph?

PistolPete · 19 Sep 2012 at 17:52

Hi people,

Something just came to me and I wondered what the legality would be.
Skins (the E4 show) is / was filmed near my house and work in Bristol, as did a fair bit of Casualty.
Large chunks are filmed in private houses and other non public areas but lots was filmed out in the open for want of a better word.

Now obviously being in public means there is nothing stopping you photographing things going on in public but it reminded me that when Skins was filming you could not even walk down the section of the street they were filming in - granted you could end up walking straight through a long shot, but they stopped you even when there was no filming. Had I pulled out a camera I'd hate to think what would have happened - but in reality what would / could happen as it's not a closed set?

Is there something that affords people filming extra privacy? NFTS was filming on our beach a few weeks back and they had about 2 dozen people holding up windbreaks to stop people watching but can they do anything more??

jonneymendoza · 19 Sep 2012 at 18:10

It's private property now as the film Cree paid licence to film on that street

ShakenNstirred · 19 Sep 2012 at 18:11

i'd have thought they cant do anything to you

PistolPete · 19 Sep 2012 at 18:24

jonneymendoza said:
It's private property now as the film Cree paid licence to film on that street

Surely it's not as easy as that. They'd have to have some way of showing what is and is not "private", plus would there not need to be notices in the local paper or something in advance? I can't claim I've every looked, but I've never come across anything like that in passing, and most film/TV companies usually dont want people to know in advance anyways.

footman · 20 Sep 2012 at 09:15

Churchill insurance have been filming a couple of times in my road featuring Martin Clunes and that dog.
Several people on the shoot have approached me and said they knew they couldn't prevent me from taking any shots but just not to get in the way. I was happy to agree with this.

The first time a woman on the production team also approached me rather hysterically asked me not to put up the images on the Internet as Martin would be unhappy.
This was despite him giving me film star smiles every time he saw me, very obviously pleased I was there, good man!
I must confess I wound her up a bit though, she was so annoying.

Nexus · 20 Sep 2012 at 11:30

If its public property, there is nothing they can do to stop you taking photos.

That said, any film or tv production wanting to shoot in public on the street will require permission and necessary insurance to cover it. If the council are being paid by the production, they will likely have provided marshalling staff. Its these kind of people who are going to ask you not to take photos or to not walk into shot or hang around. As such, neither the production company or the council will currently care about what your rights are. If you get shirty, they would likely threaten you with the Police, if they could be bothered to get involved, they would likely tell you to stop hassling the production... again, even though its your right. You will be fighting an uphill battle against people who don't want photos of what they are doing leaked.

If you look at some of the cheaper tv productions that try to film in public in the UK, you can often spot a few people who are just onlooking... which breaks the fourth wall.

I was on a production last year that needed to shoot some scenes at a major London landmark. Obviously there would be large numbers of people who would be onlooking. So there solution was simply to hire hundreds of extras to surround them, so it made anyone just milling about watching disappeared into the background. Obviously thats not a cheap way of doing things though!