Film Hampshire is the official film office for the county and also a supporter of the Exit 6 Film Festival. Their role is to promote Hampshire as a great film location, as well as providing film makers with a valuable free location-finding service, covering everything from country houses to parks, forests and beaches. Hampshire county has been the backdrop for many famous productions over the years including Downton Abbey – the most successful period drama on British television .
As a film office, our work spans across many areas in the industry, with our main priority to drive economic prosperity in Hampshire and promote the county as a fantastic film destination. With the same structure as many film offices across the country we sit within the local government, Hampshire County Council and are further part of the Economic Development team – allowing us access to a wide range of expertise and achievement of shared objectives.
Having this structure allows us to effectively work closely with various departments such as transport, second tier districts and parish councils to efficiently deliver our services to production companies. We offer a free location sourcing service, supporting with road closures and filming permissions. Uniquely, at Film Hampshire we are one of the few film offices not to charge for film permits. Independent charges for filming at locations are all dependent on the particular location and vary from the time and type of filming being undertaken.
We work very closely with other regional film offices to ensure the film landscape across the UK is maintained as a great one. Sharing expertise to assist large productions and ensuring they have the best experience filming in the UK as well as our own individual regions.
We offer our services to productions of every size and as well as sourcing locations, we also feel passionately about supporting and developing the film landscape within the county. Whether this be through the professional service promotion we do for the high calibre of businesses we have in the area, to attracting a large production into the county that further utilise our businesses local services. This can range from our very own fantastic Black Hangar Studios to camera crew, costume and catering.
Hampshire is attractive to film producers due to its close proximity to London, our fabulous landscapes and diverse range of locations on offer and not forgetting that small bonus of being permit free including for small productions and short film makers.
Projects we have supported and films that have been shot in Hampshire include most recently the first UK produced Netflix series ‘The Crown’ to be released in October 2016. This saw Winchester doubling up as many locations across London including Westminster.
We have seen Tom Cruise at Fawley Power Station in the New Forest, taking on his most impossible mission yet to eradicate the syndicate in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation [2015] and at the other end of the county at Greenham Common the Millennium Falcon made an appearance for Star Wars: The Force Awakens [2016].
Other productions filmed in Hampshire include:
Regardless of the size of your production needs we will always do what we can do to help. We enjoy the diversity of the industry and landscape and want to continue to see this thrive in Hampshire.
For more information about Film Hampshire visit their website, or to get in touch email info@filmhampshire.org.uk or call +44(0)1962 846381.
You can also follow the Film Hampshire office on Twitter: @FilmHampshire