If one of your researchers gets kidnapped by rebel fighters or arrested by the police or detained by soldiers, you’re likely to need support from people with their ears to the ground and good political contacts. So it is important that your team back at base has the ability to contact your Government’s embassy in the country, should they feel this is the appropriate course of action. The embassy might be able to apply pressure to get you released.

If you are working abroad and have been commissioned by a broadcaster (or large online platform) with a presence in the country, then tell a relevant person in the local branch that you’ll be filming. If they find out by a back-door route that you are filming in their patch it can cause internal problems, especially if your team gets into some kind of difficulty and the newspapers come knocking on the channel’s door and they know nothing about what you’re doing. The only situation in which you might consider not mentioning this is on a particularly sensitive story where you fear alerting the channel could lead to a leak.

If you’re filming on a boat off the coast you might want the coastguard’s contacts in case of an emergency. If the story takes you into a mountainous region, it might be the mountain rescue team. Use your judgment here.

You must research these risks thoroughly. A good starting point is the travel advice sections of government websites². Both contain a broad range of helpful advice and information for travellers covering visas, vaccinations, embassy locations, safety and security, local laws & customs, health, travel & transportation. But you can't just rely on these sites. You also need to keep in close touch with news developments, and speak with a locally-based experienced fixer (see below) who knows the areas that you’ll be visiting.

In this section you detail the risks and the measures you’re taking to minimize any medical harm to your team. Do they need to be vaccinated when travelling abroad? Consult a doctor to discover what vaccinations area advised and plan the trip with sufficient time to allow the vaccine to become active. You must also protect against illnesses that can't be vaccinated against, like Malaria - and equip the team to deal with medical problems. It’s always prudent to carry a medical kit containing plasters, bandages, antiseptic ointments etc. But if you’re travelling to a remote region or somewhere medical facilities are basic, it’s also worth considering bringing antibiotics, sterile needles, and syringes. Take the advice of a doctor to find out the most relevant medical kit for the trip.

General thoughts. You’ll need an explicit green light from your commissioner before working in areas made unsafe by conflict, public protest, crime or terrorism – and you wont get that without a careful consideration of the risks involved and the ways in which they can be minimised. Before working in a conflict zone, for example, most reputable broadcasters will insist that you attend a hostile environment training course where you’ll be taught how to survive in extreme environments, what to do it you’re kidnapped, plus the basics of first aid in a war zone. These courses are expensive – some last up to a week. If your project is funded, your commissioner will pay for you to attend. If you’re thinking of going it alone – these courses prepare you for the dangers you’re about to experience and can be a life-saver – so are well worth the money they cost.

The importance of a local fixer: A vital step on the road to risk reduction is to work with a knowledgeable local fixer who lives and works in the areas you’ll be visiting. Their understanding of local customs and danger spots can guide you into safe working practices and get you out of a tight fix. I was making a documentary for the BBC in Palestine some years ago about human rights abuses being committed by the Palestinian Authority. We’d stopped to film a graveyard in Gaza, the burial place of a victim of the PA. We were accompanied by the relatives of this individual who’d agreed to let us film his grave – but suddenly found ourselves surrounded by a large group of angry men, very unhappy about our presence in the cemetery. The situation became extremely tense. The local journalist working with us knew the area and the people well. He told me they felt we were disrespecting their dead and they weren’t going to let us leave until we’d been hauled in-front of the head man in the village. My fixer told us to keep calm, forget the tight filming schedule, and go and speak to this man - otherwise things could get violent. On our own we might have tried to persuade the men to let us carry on filming. But our fixer was adamant: we had to speak to the boss. So we went to see him at his home. The fixer explained what we were doing there, reassured him that, far from wanting to disrespect anyone alive or dead, we wanted to respect the opinions of people who felt aggrieved with the actions of the PA. We drank tea and, after an hour and a half, the tension evaporated. He said: ”Go ahead and film the cemetery, you have my blessing”. So I had my Palestinian fixer to thank for getting us out of that hole. The lesson here is: do not attempt to cut costs by trying to research or film on your own in areas where there is conflict, terrorism, public disorder, crime or kidnapping threats or areas in which political sensitivities are raw, especially if you’re abroad. A local fixer can be a life-saver when the unexpected happens.

Completing this section of the RA: Once you’ve understood the risks from your research, from conversations with the fixer etc., you draft out a plan for conducting your trip safely and add the information into the form. This can range from avoiding certain areas of a city after dark to providing protective equipment: anything from flak jackets and helmets to armoured vehicles depending on the situation.

It is not possible to offer general rules about the steps you need to take – but it is vital that you understand the need to take these risks seriously, research them thoroughly and be prepared to argue for extra resources if you feel they really are needed to keep your team safe. And if you can’t get those resources, then abandon the trip: no story is worth dying for.

Some religious communities resent the presence of outsiders, especially film crews. Britain’s Hidden Child Abuse – the investigative documentary discussed in Chapter 5 – was partly filmed in Stamford Hill, an area of London where many members of the Strictly Orthodox Jewish community live. We didn’t want to be insensitive to religious traditions and so avoided filming on Holy Days, like the Sabbath, and other religious festivals. So when working in countries or with groups that have particular cultural and religious sensitivities, you must research these and add restrictions onto your risk assessment that you feel will help reduce the chance of arguments or worse on the ground.

You have to keep your crew – and contributors – safe and comfortable in environmental extremes. If you’re travelling to an arid region you must consider how to protect against dehydration and sunstroke. So you might need to supply protective clothing, hats, water bottles, re-hydration salts etc. You’ll also need a code of conduct when visiting a very extreme environment: how long it’s safe to stay outside in the arctic, for example, how much water must be drunk each hour in the Sahara desert. To complete this section of the form, speak to others who have visited the region before and take their advice on the kind of kit you need to provide³.

The potential harm involved in hiring or using any vehicle is now a part of the risk assessment process. The aim is to minimize the risk of injury, to ensure the validity of any insurance cover you might have taken out to protect yourselves, and ultimately to prevent civil court actions against you or your production company for negligence should anything go wrong. So you need to be sure that any vehicle you use is in a serviceable condition and covered by insurance. This won’t be a problem if you are hiring from a reputable company like Hertz, Europcar or Avis - or local affiliates. You still need to read the small print to make sure passengers are in fact covered by the insurance, and to see exactly what your excess costs will be if the vehicle gets damaged. But what about hiring your fixer and his/her car? Is it roadworthy? Does the insurance cover accidents to passengers? Does the fixer have a current driving licence? Does the vehicle have seat belts? You must ask for, and check, relevant documents and note down on the risk assessment what you’ve done. This ensures that your crew - and contributors – are being carried in safe vehicles, by someone who can drive and that they are covered by insurance in case of an accident.

Add warnings to the RA that might seem obvious to you: no driving under the influence of drink or drugs; only using a hands-free mobile phone when at the wheel; what to do in the event of an accident. These instructions cover you (and your company) in the event of an accident. If your driver crashes while holding a mobile, it’s likely to invalidate any insurance cover you’ve taken out – and if passengers are hurt, without an explicit warning on your RA, it might also open you to a civil court action for damages.

The same principles apply to hiring, or being offered the use of, helicopters, private planes, small boats etc. You need to obtain copies of documents that demonstrate the condition of the vehicle and the competence of the pilot/captain. You might also need to take out separate insurance cover to protect those who are being carried in this way.

Risk assessment is inevitably a major part of planning an undercover shoot. But covert filming raises significantly different harm issues, so your assessment is completed on a separate undercover filming permission form. Simply state here that a separate risk assessment exists. The risks of secret filming are covered in Chapter 10.

You can only be certain that a real weapon is unloaded or loaded with blanks if someone trained in their use provides the weapon and tells you so. And having such an individual on a shoot is costly. Instead find a replica that cannot be fired (and dub on the firing effects in post production). Your risk assessment details where you got the replica and how you can be certain it is a replica rather than a weapon that’s been disabled. I have done effective reconstructions using replica guns bought from toy shops. Unless you’re planning detailed close-ups these will usually work well.

If you are working on a well-budgeted show, you might want to use more specialized kinds of filming kit - anything from a camera car mount, to a dolly & track, a camera harness, or a camera crane. Some of this equipment needs trained personnel to operate it - and all will have guidelines on safe use. These must be detailed here. Drones are a cheap way of getting lovely aerial shots - but they also have to be used responsibly – and your RA must demonstrate compliance with the regulations governing their use. See pages ?? in Chapter 3 for more information about drones.

There are issues to consider when using professional kit. Many years ago, I went to film one of the people who helped develop the Bell X1 – the first plane to fly faster than sound. We began filming an interview. Suddenly there was a loud bang, the lights went dark and a shower of hot glass flew across the room, burning holes in a lovely carpet. A bulb in one of the lights used by our camera operator had blown - and we were lucky that no-one was injured by the hot glass. Our lighting kit had been checked prior to filming, and the bulbs were meant to be immune from such dangerous behaviour, so our insurance replaced the interviewee’s carpet. This is unlikely to happen today as most lighting kit uses LED light bulbs that don’t get as hot as their incandescent cousins.

But using lighting equipment does raise other risks that need to be minimized here:: for example, cables run across a floor should be taped down (or placed under cable trunking) so that people cannot trip over them; and lighting stands used outside should be weighed down with sandbags to prevent them blowing over in the wind. You also have to guard against certain harms when using camera equipment: a camera operator working hand-held and walking backwards to follow a contributor, needs someone walking behind them to prevent a fall. Safety precautions need to be detailed if there are trip hazards, or if the filming is taking place near to dangerous machinery or a busy road. Your camera-person must also be given regular breaks when working hand-held – as this can be very tiring.

Your RA must indicate how you will protect camera equipment from the elements; state that the kit must be checked to be in working order before the shoot day; and that all rushes should be reviewed on a monitor after the day’s filming to check for any technical problems. You make all this explicit to comply with your insurance cover. If there is a technical fault in the camera, for example, and you shoot several days of rushes before noticing that every file is unusable, your production insurance is likely to only pay for one day’s re-shoot. They’ll argue that you have behaved irresponsibly in not minimizing likely risks - saying that you should have picked this up at the end of the first day’s filming. But it might not be an insurance company asking difficult questions. It could be a barrister in a court of law if something really serious happens. So take these risks seriously.

These are high-risk areas for obvious reasons: rotten floors, dangerous ceilings, sharp debris, staircases that lack railings, unfenced roofs and so on. You need to take extra care and record your preparations in this section. It might be as simple as ensuring that your team wear strong shoes. But if you need to film from an unfenced floor on a derelict building, you might need to hire a harness for your camera operator, tying it to a nearby structure to prevent a fall.

If you are filming inside a building, you need a basic fire safety procedure just in case the worst happens during the shoot. Your RA should appoint one member of the team – usually the director – to be responsible for determining the evacuation route, ensuring the crew exits the building rapidly in the event of a fire and checking that everyone has got out safely.

You must be aware of the potential dangers of working alone in areas where crime or violence is rife. Some districts can be relatively safe during the day but become very risky at night. You need to research these dangers, using local knowledge, and then implement a safety code. It might mean ensuring that team members never work alone, or that a female researcher is accompanied by a male when visiting a potential interviewee at night in a rough district. In some areas, you might also need a contact protocol, so that someone back at base is called before the team visit the area, told how long they are likely to be there, and then phoned again once they have left. You must, of course, also have a list of the people being visited, their addresses and phone numbers.

If you’re working with an elderly person or someone with physical disabilities, they might tire easily and need regular rests. If they are in a wheelchair and there’s no easy access to the building in which you wish to film, they might need to be carried in. But you’ll need to be certain you can do this safely. A contributor might suffer from an illness that requires specific medical attention while with you. These are the kind of risks you need to detail here - with an assessment of how you plan to minimize them.

Filming Children in the UK

Ofcom, the communications regulator, oversees the participation and portrayal of children and young people in programmes made for broadcast⁴. Its rules state that, irrespective of any consent obtained by a parent or guardian:

“Due care must be taken over the physical and emotional welfare and the dignity of people under eighteen who take part or are otherwise involved in programmes.”

“People under eighteen must not be caused unnecessary distress or anxiety by their involvement in programmes or by the broadcast of those programmes.”⁵

So if you are thinking of including someone under 18 in a film made for broadcast in the UK, read the relevant sections of the Ofcom broadcasting code and the guidance notes on these sections⁶ first. The rules are very detailed and the advice I offer here is only a broad summary. Your risk assessment needs to demonstrate how you intend to comply with these two rules at all stages of production and after the programme has been shown. Ask yourself the following questions:

Is it appropriate for a child to contribute to my film?

Ofcom says that each case of a child taking part in a programme must be judged on its own – taking into account the nature of the programme and a child’s “age, maturity and capacity to make judgments” about the consequences of taking part. Because the regulator places the welfare of the child above their participation in any programme – you might need to ask a medical or psychological expert about the impact of speaking about intimate matters. A survivor of the Islamist bombing of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, for example, could be re-traumatised by talking about what happened to them. Or it might prove to be a positive, cathartic experience. You will not in a position to judge this and the advice you take to understand the likely impact of your plans needs to be detailed on your RA. There might be situations in which you decide not to film a child even if they and their parents are giving the green light to their participation.

What permission do I need to film the child?

You need to obtain formal informed consent for a child or young person to participate in your film. What that means depends on the age and maturity of the person – and the nature of their contribution. I explore this in more detail in my explanation of release forms on pages ?? in Chapter 9.

What impact will the experience of taking part in the filming have on the child?

Your RA needs to demonstrate that you are placing the child’s welfare above the requirements of your film schedule. So you have to consider whether the process of the filming could have an adverse impact on the child. Filming can be a little intimidating to those not used to it - so having both a single point of contact on the team for the child and a close friend or family member who can accompany them to the shoot can be helpful.

Have I considered what is likely to happen after the film is shown?

The broadcast of a film dealing with sensitive personal issues might, for example, provoke a social media storm that could have consequences for the contributor: they might be bullied. Your RA should detail the preparations you've made to anticipate this.

Filming Children in America

There is no Ofcom-type regulator in the US and so no official guidelines telling film-makers how to behave when filming children – which makes filming young people in public spaces much easier than in the UK. In a public place someone who is under 18 years old can, legally speaking, be treated in much the same way as adults: no permission is strictly required so long as they are portrayed accurately. But if you pre-arrange filming with a younger child, it is good practice never to do so alone, to have a parent or guardian present. You shouldn’t have any physical contact with the child, or film during school hours, and one member of your team must be responsible for ensuring that all these rules are adhered to. If you are filming more than a one-off interview with a child, you should also make sure you are complying with federal and state child labour laws. US TV networks also sometimes impose their own regulations that film-makers have to follow if they are using children – for example, some insist on signed consent forms co-signed by a parent.

To keep budgets in the black, producers inevitably want to make the most cost effective use of filming time. There’s always too few hours in the day to complete what needs to be done and there’s often a temptation to squeeze a crew to do as much as possible when scheduling a shoot. But you have to realize there’s a point at which the need to keep costs down crosses over into unsafe practice. That happens when you push people so much that they are too tired to make effective judgments. When scheduling your shoot you must consider whether the next day’s plans are really practical or whether you are at best compromising creativity - at worst risking people’s safety - by asking them to do too much. It might be cost effective to drive 4 hours to the next location after a 12 hour shooting day, but it’s certainly not going to be safe. It’s also not going to generate much goodwill if you work your crew to the bone. Camera operators – like the rest of us - are much more creative after a good meal and a decent night’s kip.

Filming from the top of a tall crane, on a cliff or on the roof of a skyscraper each pose different safety issues. How do you ensure that your camera operator can climb to the top of that crane without dropping her kit or, worse still, falling off while trying to take a shot? Can you be sure that the path you’ve decided to take up to the top of the cliff with a fantastic view, really is safe? Perhaps you need special climbing equipment? And how safe is that skyscraper roof when the wind is blowing hard? You’ll need expert advice on these issues that’s detailed in this part of the RA. You might also need special insurance cover to film at any of these risky locations.

Most car insurance cover will only pay up for items stolen from a vehicle if they are kept locked and out of sight. Your team might not be aware of this limitation – and flagging it up on your risk assessment is a good precaution. If you are filming on the streets, it’s very easy for kit to vanish – stolen or forgotten when attention is focused on the shoot rather than on the equipment left on the ground. So add a warning in your RA that someone must always be responsible for looking after the kit while filming takes place. Your insurance company is likely to want to see evidence of the precautions you’ve taken to avoid loss before paying out if there’s a theft.

Professional camera, lighting and sound recording kit packed into protective cases can be very heavy. A film crew that works well together is usually one in which specific roles and responsibilities are forgotten when it comes to clearing up at the end of a shoot. But you don’t want any obligation to creep into end-of-shoot activities, particularly if someone suffers, or has in the past suffered, from back pain. Publicly excusing anyone who has a history of back problems from lifting heavy kit will avoid this likelihood. You can go further, and offer advice to help avoid the possibility of future back problems: keeping a straight back while holding the load close to the body and using leg muscles to achieve lift, for example.

Filming can involve a range of other risks - working with animals, diving, stunts, aerobatics and a lot of other dangerous activities. Here you can detail anything else you consider to be relevant and list the actions taken to minimize any likely harm.

Finally there’s the sign off section. The filming can't go ahead until this form has been signed by those with responsibility for the production – usually the producer and executive producer. If you’re working on your own, then it’s down to you. In signing you and they are agreeing that they’ve read the form and acknowledge that it has addressed the risks of the shoot as far as possible. So this is not a mere formality. You really do need to be happy that risks have been minimized.

In summary: don't take this form lightly. If anything should go wrong on your research trip or shoot, it provides the basis of your evidence that the risks were handled responsibly.

Each day on a shoot should have a different call sheet – hence the date at the top to avoid mistakes. Each person on the shoot should get a copy before they leave for the location. And key individuals back at base also get one - the Executive Producer, for example. If you are working with a production manager – they prepare this. If not, it’s the producer’s job.

The title of your film is likely to be a ‘working title’ at this stage – the final film title will be agreed with your commissioner much further down the line. On a sensitive investigation, you might disguise the film title with something anodyne, to minimize the possibility of anyone outside the crew and contributors finding out what you are doing.

This is a warning note. It will not be necessary on most films – but information security is important, for example, where a contributor will only agree to appear in silhouette and you clearly don't want to risk anyone outside the production team discovering their identity. On such films you might decide only to add an address, and omit the name of the contributor from the call sheet.

These contacts ensure everyone on the shoot and back at your base can rapidly contact each other.

List these in the order in which you’ll be visiting them so that, at a glance, your crew knows where they will be travelling.

Your team needs to know who to contact in an emergency, especially if working abroad and in need of urgent repatriation. If you are working with a production manager, it’s best to speak to them before contacting the insurance company.

On this shoot the filming day begins at 7-30am when your producer picks up a hire car. 30 minutes has been permitted for that task – to allow for a wait, the paperwork, and for the car to be driven round to the customer. If you don’t anticipate the likely real time it will take to do a task, you’ll start the day behind schedule.

Realistic travel times that allow for rush hour traffic, are vital in a film schedule otherwise you’ll arrive late and knock the rest of your schedule out of line. The number of hours in a filming day becomes a critical costing issue if you are working with a camera operator and/or sound recordist. Their fee covers a working day of either 10 or 12 hours in length, agreed in advance, and timed from the moment they start work (by packing gear into their vehicle) to the time they arrive back at their base with the gear unpacked. If you exceed the agreed length, you’ll be charged overtime at an hourly rate. So the call sheet must include travel times for your camera operator (and sound recordist) at both ends of the day - allowing you to plan a schedule the keeps within your filming budget.

You have to allow some time to say hello, possibly even drink a cup of tea or coffee with your interviewees. If you simply barge in and set up the camera kit without such niceties, you’re going to have a jumpy, nervous contributor once you start filming. So allow a little time for chit chat to keep the schedule on track. Also here are parking instructions because you don't want your team to waste time looking for a place to park and, if they have to pay for it, find that they don’t have any change for the meters.

It takes time to bring in the kit, unpack the camera and lights and get everything ready to shoot. How long you allow depends on the situation and on how perfectionist you want to be about the image and the lighting. So consult with your camera operator if you’re working with one, to estimate how long you’ll need to allow. If not, take some advice from a more experienced producer.

The time needed for any interview will of course vary with the number of questions and the content of what’s being discussed. So make sure your allowance is realistic.

It also takes time to wrap your interview set – and then move to another room and set up lights & camera ready to film some establishing images of your interviewee. Allow for this in your schedule.

How long will it take you to film a picture sequence with your interviewee? It is easy to underestimate the time needed. If you are working with a professional camera operator, it’s worth describing what you want to achieve to find out how long to allow. If not, ask someone who has done a lot of filming.

If you are planning a lunch break at a local café, find out how long it takes to get there from your filming location and add this to the schedule.

If you are self-shooting, you can decide when to have a break, when to eat and when to stop filming. But if you are working with a camera person, you have to plan for lunch. The financial and time pressures on a producer are severe and can make you want to skimp on lunch. But a camera operator doesn't work well on an empty stomach and it’s no good saying: “Sorry, we’ve overrun our schedule and you’ll have to forget about lunch”. That’s going to sour your professional relationship – and creativity suffers when there’s discord on location. Or empty stomachs. So make sure you have planned a lunch break: it could be sandwiches from a nearby take-away if time is really pressed - or a sit-down lunch at a café but book a table in advance, as you don't want the crew to be standing around using up precious schedule time waiting to get a meal.

Exterior locations like parks, train stations, shopping arcades require formal filming permissions to be in place before you arrive. Your crew needs to know the details so that they can respond to any queries. That might simply be the phone number of the authorising person - but it often means giving the crew a more formal written permission obtained from the relevant authority. If you are parking a vehicle, add information about the nearest location and the costs, if any.

When your crew moves to a new location, they’ll most likely be driving in a vehicle equipped with a Sat Nav. They’ll need the address of the location, of course, as indicated in line 16 in this schedule. But add driving directions and a map as a back-up. If interviewees are travelling separately to a location by cab, as in this fictitious example, then add the phone number of the taxi firm to the sheet so that you can quickly track them down if they don’t appear when they should. If they are driving to the location, tell them where they can park, with directions if necessary. If they are coming by public transport, add the details of their trip, the bus number, the train arrival time etc., onto the sheet. Don’t forget to add a reminder of the meeting location.

These 15 minutes allow the crew to walk back to their vehicle & pack up the filming kit before leaving.

This is the time at which you leave your last filming location.

The time at which your camera operator has arrived home and unpacked his/her kit. That’s when their working day ends. If you are working with a sound recordist you’d also add a sound wrap time onto the schedule.

To keep on budget, the crew needs to know how much they can spend on food and drink. You can either give them a daily cash allowance – or set a maximum limit and insist on receipts to claim back what they’ve spent. Petrol and parking costs will also normally be refunded via receipts. This line should also include a disclaimer about speeding and parking fines.

In this example, two re-usable 32Gb flash cards are supplied with the kit (listed in the next section) and, at the end of each day’s filming, all the rushes have to be copied onto two hard drives – a master copy and a safety - freeing up the flash cards for the next day’s shoot. This saves having to buy (or rent) enough flash cards for your entire shoot. Some companies insist you keep the day’s rushes on the flash cards after downloading onto a hard drive. Either way, you’d indicate this here.

List the kit that’s being supplied and where it is coming from. If it belongs to your camera operator, he or she will bring it to the shoot. But if you are hiring in, you’ll need to indicate the supplier, plus how, where and when it is being delivered to the shoot – and what happens at the end of the day.

Broadcasters and online platforms require you to obtain ‘release forms’ for each location in which you film – and each contributor that you interview. You or your PM must ensure there are enough pro-forma releases on location for this purpose. Release forms are explained in more detail later on in this chapter.

A reminder that the risk assessment for this shoot will be sent round the evening before filming begins – and must be read by all. Risk Assessments are discussed in detail in Chapter 8.

Sat Navs avoid the need for detailed driving instructions – but it’s worth attaching a map of the locations to your schedule, just in case the crew has trouble finding it.

America and British media lawyers have a different view on the amount of information to be given in the programme description. See text box on page ??

Tells the contributor that their interview might be shown in any media platform in any part of the world. This gives the company the right to sell the film.

Makes it clear that in giving the interview, the contributor cannot assume that it will eventually be screened at all. It might not get in the final cut of the film.

The contributor agrees to give all their rights in the contribution to the production company. So the interviewee can’t later on claim that the interview was in any way owned by them. And they agree that their contribution doesn’t violate someone else’s copyrighted material. For example, an interviewee who reads out someone’s poem claiming it to be their own.

Gives the production company full editorial control over the interviewee’s contribution – the contributor can’t later on request the right to have a veto over how they appear in the film.

The contributor gives up their right to be recognized as the author of the contribution and therefore their right to object to its use in your programme.

The contributor agrees that their contribution won’t deliberately bring harm to the company.

In the UK, individuals or companies that collect personal data have to use the information in a way that complies with the Data Protection Act 2018, a law that implements the EU General Data Protection Regulations. So a release form – which contains personal information – contains a statement indicating that this data will be handled in a manner that is compliant with this 2018 Act. It also tells a contributor where they can read the company’s privacy policy outlining in detail how their information will in fact be handled. The precise wording of this statement (and the privacy policy itself) would need to be agreed with the lawyer advising your production to ensure full compliance with the 2018 Act.

In the US, there is no single law regulating the collection and use of personal data. Instead a mixture of federal and state laws are involved. So film-makers working with American citizens do not need a similar data protection statement in a release form – and the collection and processing of personal data during their work should not violate any US law so long as they comply with any company data protection policy and take reasonable care not to release personal data to unauthorized people.

Permits the production company to give the rights and obligations of the agreement to a new owner – and states the country whose legislation governs the agreement.

Ensures that any images filmed at the location are owned by the production company that is given the right to use them, or not use them, as it sees fit.

Reassures the owner that the property will be left as the film crew found it; and that the production company has sufficient level of liability insurance cover to pay for any damage for which it is responsible.

This line is included if you are paying a facility fee for the use of the property.

As in the contributor release, this sets out the country (England & Wales – or the USA) whose legislation governs the agreement.