Filming in public - can you photograph?

[PistolPete]

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??

 

[PistolPete]

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.