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How to get a film permit in San Francisco

Locations for video production can make or break a project. When looking for spots to shoot, we typically like to evaluate what kind of locations would tell the story best. Whether that’s shots of nature, an indoor seamless background, or city shots, every location poses potential challenges. When we determine that we need to film in a city, it’s often that we turn to our own backyard in San Francisco to get the shots we need. SF has its challenges for sure, including parking, security as well as traffic, but every time we apply for a permit, we know we are about to get some gold shots! In this article, we’ll break down how to get a film permit in San Francisco.

Before we dive in, you might be thinking, do I really have to get a film permit to shoot in SF? While we can’t answer that question for you, there are several factors to keep in mind regardless of the size of your production.

#1. Is your client with you?

If so, the obvious answer is yes. You should absolutely get a permit. It’s a professional thing to do, and it doesn’t cost that much. When we first started shooting, we’d often wing it, but as we’ve grown, we’ve learned the risk vs reward if you get stopped, is just not worth it.

#2. How big is your crew?

If you aren’t with a client, and you are just solo shooting a quick pickup scenic shot, you may be able to get away with not permitting. Although we’d still recommend it! The penalties for getting stopped when shooting commercially can be steep!

#3. How many shots and what shots do you need?

If you are trying to get a bunch of shots at very specific locations, we’d highly recommend permitting. This will give you 100% certainty you can get the shots!!

#4. Will you have security

If you are looking to film in San Francisco for more than a quick pickup shot, we’d highly recommend having security. There have been countless robberies over the last few years and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down! Even news crews aren’t safe. Permitting such that you can hire security guards is key! Usually, you can get security for around $20/hr per guard with an 8-hour minimum.

Overview

The first thing to know when going for a film permit application is who to get them from. FIlmSF is your key to getting a film permit. They’ve got a department of very friendly people who will guide you through the permitting process. According to the FilmSF website: “A production permit is required whenever you’re shooting on City property for commercial or non-commercial purpose except for private family use.”

However that said, you’ve got to remember who’s property you are shooting on. Although you might be on a beach in San Francisco, that doesn’t necessarily mean that is city property. So FilmSF wouldn’t actually be the place to issue your permit. If your location is in SF but it’s technically not city property, check out this comprehensive list of contacts. Let’s break down how to get a film permit in San Francisco.

Timeframe

So you’ve determined you do need a permit to capture your shots and they are on San Francisco city property. But how long does it take to get your film permit? The answer is that it takes 4 days to get the permit approved. During this time, they’ll review your application, look over your insurance, approve(or deny) your parking request and notify the appropriate jurisdictions of your filming dates and locations. That said, if you are looking to close down a street or use an SFMTA vehicle, it could take an additional 5-10 days. This means that the total process could take up to 2 weeks. Best to get started early.

Insurance

As you start the application you’ll see that you need insurance. The requirements are rigid. You’ll need to have general liability insurance of $1,000,000 for each Occurrence and a $2,000,000 Aggregate. In common terms, this means that your coverage would protect them against a $1,000,000 accident up to two accidents. You’ll also need to have auto liability insurance if you’ll have vehicles on site. The requirements for this are $1,000,000 combined single limit. The last requirement if you have employees onsite is worker compensation insurance. For this, you’d be required to have the statutory limits as well as employers liability not less than $1,000,000 per accident, injury of illness. That said, if you don’t have any employees onsite, you can fill out the waiver of subrogation endorsement form. This can be a frustrating process when trying to learn how to get a film permit in San Francisco.

There’s a chance that you don’t have production insurance. In this case, you might consider getting a project production insurance plan. This would protect any rentals that you rent for the project as well as any liability insurance requirements!

Community Notice

Depending on where you are filming or what type of production you are looking to shoot, you may be required to give notice to the community. There are several ways to do this. Post with blue painter’s tape in public spaces where you will film. You should also tape notices near call boxes for apartment buildings. Further, hand them to doormen or front desk staff. You can also tape them to mailboxes(although do not put them inside). Essentially you just want to make sure that everyone in the area is aware that you will be filming. This should be done approximately 72 to 96 hours before you will begin your first day of filming. The last thing you want while you are filming is to be disturbed and told to stop filming just because a neighbor was not informed!

Cost

There is no cost for the permit application. However, if they grant you a permit, you’ll be required to pay the fees to make the permit become active. The fees range depending on your usage. According to the Wrapbook the costs are as follows:

Still Photography: $100/day

Commercial, corporate media, web and music video: $200/day

TV Series, movie, pilot, web series etc: Budgets less than $100,000: $50/day. Budgets of $100,000 to $500,000: $100/day. Budgets of $500,000 or greater: $300/day.

You may also be able to quality for a significantly less rate if you can supply your budget for the project.

If you are working on a student film. Guess what? The permit is free. However, you’d still need to be able to provide the general liability insurance requirements. Your school may be able to help with this. On the other hand, if they can’t help you, then you’d need to pony up for some production insurance. You could try asking for a student discount.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, getting a permit isn’t really all that hard. Yes, it will take you about 2-4 hours to complete the application and get your insurance documents, but then you’ll be free to rest easy knowing your production shouldn’t be bothered. I hope you’ve enjoyed this article on how to get a film permit in San Francisco. We wish we had known about the steps earlier in our career. There isn’t a need to make it more complicated than it is! If you are looking for other film permitting departments, check out the City of Oakland’s film permitting office. Or perhaps you are looking to get a film permit in San Jose.

Are you looking for San Francisco video production? We’ve got all the skills needed to permit in San Francisco. If you are looking for a local crew to get shots for your production company, contact us to find out how we can bring your remote filming needs to life!

Another successful Kickstarter video! – Mymug

When Making modern reached out about doing a video for their Mymug mug, we were deep in the trenches finishing up another video. However, we put together a treatment to blend commercial and corporate video production into a succinct video and they loved it. For this Kickstarter video, they wanted to incorporate one of their founders as well as their story as to why they were making this indestructible mug. Let’s discuss the tools we use for this successful Kickstarter video. They were trying to raise 20k of pre-orders but ended up raising almost 3x!

Treatment

The first thing we do before starting any video production is to make sure the creative is locked. For this, we write what is known as a treatment. This visual guide will discuss in-depth, each of the aspects of the film, from the story to the characters to the VO and any other visuals we’ll be seeing. Typically these could be anywhere from a few thousand words all the way up to ten thousand words. However, the goal with these isn’t necessarily to just write and write and write. It’s to be concise but also detailed. It’s truly a subtle art. We also love to use many pictures as well as have on occasion used sketches to describe any specific blocking.

Preproduction

We’ll break down our preproduction into locations, actors, rentals and script

Locations

One of the first things we do for a successful Kickstarter video is to look for locations. We use our treatment to guide our needed choices and to some degree, it’s our instruction manual for how it should be made. This means that if we write “coffee shop” in our treatment, we’ll likely need to find one. For this particular project, we didn’t have a huge budget so knew we’d need to be resourceful in what we could find. First, we knew we could shoot on the beach for free. We found a nearby campsite to that beach and knew we could permit it as well as book a spot relatively easily. The house we rented on Airbnb, and the other house we used the back deck of a friend’s house. The final and hardest location to secure was the coffee shop.

Because their mug was first and foremost a coffee mug, this scene needed to be beautiful and functional. One of our buddies who also happened to be our photographer used to work at a coffee shop in downtown Santa Cruz and was able to ask them if we could shoot there for an hour. That said, they didn’t want us messing with the line flow and recommended we shoot during a slightly off-peak later morning time. This was great news! Now we’d be able to get those beautiful coffee shop shots!

Actors

For this project, we used SFcasting for our casting. We knew we needed a man for our coffee scene. A couple for the beach scene. A female for the house and running scene. As well as a child. Since the child would be only needed for one short scene, we decided to just use a friend’s kid who let them come for the acting experience. The other talent was paid, but because this wasn’t a big-budget production, our rates weren’t super high!

Rentals

For this project, we shot on the Canon c200 with Zeiss Ze Canon mount lenses. We rented the camera and already owned the lenses. On the lighting side of things, we rented an Arri m18 as well as a grip truck. We supplemented many other lights with units that we already had. We also used our DP’s Movi Pro. Lastly, we rented some basic props for our scene.

Script

One of the first things we think of when we think of a successful Kickstarter video is how inspiring and relatable it is. This means that it needs to come to life! You can do this through visuals, music but we find the Voiceover can go a long way as well.

Production

Day 1

The production was shot over 1.5 days. The first day we shot the founder interview as well as the VW bus camping scene and the beach scene. We met at around 2pm to start setting up for the interview and were done shooting just after sunset. One of the challenges of this project was that the founder had a very specific set of words to say but didn’t want to use a teleprompter. This meant that the interview took a while! Luckily we had buffered some extra time for the company move and it all worked out. There were several logistical factors to take into account so a good schedule really helped us stay on track!

Day 2

Day 2 was our primary production day! We met at the house location to build cameras and prep and then carpooled downtown to our coffee shop. Once we got there, our Gaffer from Bulldog lighting and Grip started setting up the m18 outside. We set up the cash register scene in another area to avoid causing problems with their main team. As they set this up, we also shot the downtown walking shots. After we finished at the coffee shop we then headed to the Airbnb to set up the kitchen and living room scene. Because there wasn’t any spoken dialogue in these scenes we just needed gorgeous B roll to fill out the story!

After the kitchen and living room scenes, we blasted over to the state park to shoot a runner. These shots didn’t make it into the final piece but were gorgoues. Trust us! Lastly, we went over to our friend’s house to shoot the final backyard deck scene.

Post Production

The post-production for this project was relatively straightforward because we had already scripted it and just needed to get the voiceover recorded and put the edit together. The only real challenge was to get the lid rotoscoped. We used voices.com to get the voiceover recorded. All in all, a pretty easy edit. You can see the final video here!

Wrap up

When you are looking to create a successful kickstarter video, you’ve got to start with the end in mind! Really think about how your target audience will resonate with the piece. Will they find it relatable with the several avatars?

Looking for an awesome San Francisco-based, Kickstarter video production company, contact us today. We’d love to help you with your fundraising goals!

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