Filming in London (commercial interest)

[Mr Whippy]

Doing some filming in London tomorrow, an interview to start that is all organised and was all that was planned, but now the boss is wanting us to spend the afternoon shooting 'stock' footage (don't ask) of London to add value to the trip, which makes sense, but not so sure without organisation... with some of our people walking upto/into buildings after wittering about financial crisis etc to camera... This is for corporate/commercial use.

I've noticed there are permits possibly required or possibly not. We are a small team (3 - 4, two digital HD cameras, probably a tripod and thats it)


What is access like to the following (I'm certain some are private and others won't allow this without a permit knowing what London security is like these days)

Gherkin, filming on the street/walking into it?
Bank of England
Canary Wharf (have a feeling we won't have a hope in hell of arsing around with a camera/tripod un-invited)
Stock exchange


I just feel uncomfortable doing commerical work without having gone through the proper channels in this regard, despite having mentioned that planning this may well have been ideal a week or so ago, not the day before!


Thanks for any advice at all.

Dave

[CVP]

I suspect with all of those you are going to have issues without having discussed and got the right permission to start with, esp the Gherkin and BoE.

If you are lucky of course you will be allowed to film, but for stock be aware that Swiss Re have claimed copyright to the likeness of their building so if you are being 100% upfront you would not be able to sell the footage for anything other than editorial use without getting a licence from them.

I would definitely try and contact the media relations folks and see if you can get written permission before you go and start to film

Chris

Edited by CVP on Monday 23 March 17:06

[trackdemon]

Yeah I think you'll struggle too, I know for a fact you can't use Canary Wharf without prior permission.... contact their press office and you might get limited permission?

[nick_bbb]

One other thing to bear in mind if you are trying to get voxpop, I work for a big financial institution and someone got serverley repremanded for talking to the press. We had a communication round telling us not to talk to any cameras.

[//dean]

Canary Wharf charge a flat rate of £150ph for filming/photog, all info on their site (which I cannot remember for the life of me).

[Fordo]

film london are worth a call: http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/

and theyre website also has some great pdfs with filming locations, and who you need to ring for persmision:

http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryI...



its not easy sorting out persmission at short notice. Ive done quite a bit of location filming in London. If your anywhere sensitive security wise, always find a copper and have a chat before you start. if you get a friendly one, they'll even tell you some good spots to film from!

[Fordo]

oh, regarding canary wharf- as mentioned, the whole area is privately owned. Our company struck a deal with them so they let us film for free, as long as they got a copy of the tapes what they could use for they're own purposes. We were a 3 man crew, with just 2 cameras and tripods. They even let us film from the top of canary wharf, right at the top where the public dont have access to! Was pretty cool, apart from the fact it was a very hazy summer day, and you couldnt really see the horizon

[Mr Whippy]

Thanks for all the advice everyone.

Was a good day for filming, but as you had probably gathered, we didn't go too well prepped for the footage at the said locations, so what we got probably won't be used, but it's a good lesson to the powers that be that sent us there that, as I said, you need to prepare and communicate with these places to get the best from them!
Canary Wharf press office basically said £200 an hour and pre-book (which I had told our people from posts here days ago but to no avail )

We did some filming in the morning in Parliament, and some outside, which went well, because it had been organised weeks ahead

Planning to visit more in future, and I think now the managers are realising that PH *IS* a good reference for such matters in future, rather than assuming, from doing no research, that London is just a free-run for commercial filming activity

Dave

[Simpo Two]

It simply means your boss doesn't understand the industry. Any video pro could have told him you can't just walk into places and start filming. It sounds like you did your best to get advice which you passed on - and he ignored it. Alas, there's more to making videos than just buying shiny kit, even if it does have 'HD' on it

[CVP]

Mr Whippy said:

and I think now the managers are realising that PH *IS* a good reference

and there goes your productivity right out of the window

Yes boss, just doing more research

Chris

[Mr Whippy]

Simpo Two said:

It simply means your boss doesn't understand the industry. Any video pro could have told him you can't just walk into places and start filming. It sounds like you did your best to get advice which you passed on - and he ignored it. Alas, there's more to making videos than just buying shiny kit, even if it does have 'HD' on it

Well, I already had a good idea about just still photography and property/image rights in London for commercial use, so it was no surprise the same/worse would apply for video with all the extra kit, and I felt like I was just talking to deaf ears about informing the locations we wanted to shoot there as advised by several web sites on this matter, as well as on here!


I made it pretty clear that if we wanted to be a 'good company' we should do it by the book and in doing so would be helped along our way to get the best footage we could by the respective press offices etc, but I was met by that usual response that feels like no one thought it would be so hard, it's too late in the day, and the boss wants to do it to add value to the trip during the middle of the day (we had the morning shoot, and a small planned shoot at 7pm so an afternoon to kill otherwise (yes please!)), so lets just do it anyway.

The de-brief was that lessons were learnt on how best to do it next time, which was basically what all the info on the web had said in the first place. Plan things and ring ahead


HD rules ok (we shot DV format to DV tape though)

Dave

Edited by Mr Whippy on Wednesday 25th March 20:50

[mneame]

Was nosing out of the office window yesterday and saw the police chatting to a guy who was filming at Canary Wharf. Just seemed to have set up shop outside the entrance to the shopping mall on Bank Street. They didn't even bother getting out of the car! Not sure if he had to stop but Canary Wharf Security hadn't even been over to him by the looks of it.

[mikee boy]

I'm not disputing if it's true, but I can't believe it's possible to protect the image of a building if shot/filmed from a public viewpoint.

Edited by mikee boy on Friday 27th March 12:55