Renting as a Film Location

Renting your property for use as a film location, TV location or even a photoshoot location is a great way of bringing in revenue from your properties.

There are a few important things you need to know before making the decision to enter into this potentially profitable rental option.

Hopefully this set of pages will give you enough information to help you in your decision-making process, and to prepare you in the event that you are selected for a production.

How it all started for us

When we moved to Stallington Hall Farm in 2003 we always intended to rent out a portion of the property for something! A children’s nursery, a holiday cottage, and permanent tenants were all discussed, but the first idea we decided to take forward was that of a film location.

The reason we chose a film location was that:

• If we were successful we would only have a few weeks occupancy a year. Yet our income would be at least as much as a permanent tenant would achieve. e.g. less disruption to the family
• The kudos from having a film made at our house would be something we could exploit for other projects, even if the place was only used as a film location once.
• The property had enough character, and was flexible enough in appearance to be considered an option for several types of film/TV productions.

The key: understanding the market

So I started to do my research. I spent months of early morning starts (5am), and working late into the night, researching the film location market in the West Midlands, and UK in general.

I have to say that much of my research has been fascinating, but also extremely time consuming, and sometimes despairing.

I figured that I needed to get smart and find the source of the film productions if I was to get anywhere.

I determined that the Producer or Director would probably be the person choosing the film location. Why not start there?

With this in mind, I searched the Internet extensively, looking for forums with an active membership of these professionals.

Luckily, it didn’t take me long to find these sites. I registered our property immediately for consideration as a film location.

The largest forum remains Shootingpeople.org. Membership is cheap (approx £20 for the year) and you get daily update bulletins that help you immensely.

Shootingpeople.org also supports different professional groups, e,g, Directors, Writers, Casting, etc, and your membership covers any or all of these groups.

I registered with:

• Writers - to try to find out what productions were being planned.

• Directors - To get a general feel for the industry and gain insight as to which productions were in plan. My main aim here was to try and get to the Directors of local productions before they had done their "story-boards". This would put our property at an advantage when selecting a film location, as the scenes would already be written for the layout of the house!

Casting - To see who was casting for which film, and whether these films were likely to be made in our area.

So, How Did We Do?

The bottom line is that our house was used as a film location! The film was called The Silencer, and a very good production it is too.

It was filmed by Phoenix-I Productions of Loughborough. They were in need of a "gangsters house" for their film.

You can read more about this production and see the trailer at our Film location web site.

For me, the financial aspect is just one of the pay-backs. It was extremely interesting watching a script unravel, and learning first-hand how a production is put together.

I also found the people to be polite, professional, and easy to work with. But you need to be prepared for the disruption that you will undoubtedly encounter when your property is used as a film location, TV location or even a photoshoot location.

Here are some links to pages that answer common questions about setting up as a film location