Filming in Belfast: locations, crews and permits for business video

Filming a business video in Belfast needs permission from whoever controls each location: the owner on private premises, Belfast City Council for council land and most public roads, and Belfast Harbour Police for the harbour estate and Titanic Quarter. Allow 12 weeks for a road closure, and clear any drone flight near the harbour with air traffic control.

Most company shoots are simpler than that list suggests. An interview in your own office or a demonstration on your factory floor needs the owner’s written agreement and the consent of the people on camera, and little else. Strategy, scripting and what a finished film costs are covered on our video production Belfast page; this page deals with the logistics of getting a crew onto a location and filming there legally.

The procedures below come mainly from Northern Ireland Screen’s Code of Practice for film production, which applies to commercials, corporate and online video as well as drama, and from the published filming procedures of the city’s larger landowners. Each landowner can change its process, so treat the notice periods here as the minimum and confirm them when you book.

Most business shoots need the owner’s consent and little else

A shoot on private premises with your own staff needs no permit from the council or the police. The owner of the building agrees in writing, the people who appear on camera sign a release, and the crew follows the site’s own health and safety rules. That covers most recruitment films, customer testimonials and product demonstrations, which is why the formats described in our guide to corporate video costs and types in Belfast rarely involve a permit at all.

Permission becomes a real planning task once the crew steps onto public property. Northern Ireland Screen’s code asks productions to inform the PSNI and the local council of all filming on public property in their area, with the company’s name and address, a contact, and the number of people and vehicles involved. The same code asks that Northern Ireland Screen is told about any filming in Northern Ireland, and its definition of production explicitly includes corporate video, online content and work by social media influencers.

Some content raises the bar further whatever the location. Staged crimes or accidents, replica firearms, actors in police or military uniform and special effects all need specific guidance from the PSNI, and the code notes that impersonating a police officer is an offence, so uniforms are covered between takes. A product film rarely needs any of that, but a safety training video that recreates a workplace accident might.

Belfast’s main locations sit with several different permission holders

The quickest way to plan a Belfast shoot is to list every place the camera will point and name the body that controls each one. The city centre, the waterfront and the university quarter look continuous on screen, yet they belong to different organisations with different forms, fees and response times.

Council parks, buildings and city centre streets

Belfast City Council manages its own parks, cemeteries and civic buildings and applies a scale of charges for filming on them. Council officers have historically attached conditions to sensitive sites; a 2012 committee report on filming in City Cemetery, for example, ruled out close-ups of personal details on headstones. Pavements and streets in the city centre are public space, so a handheld shot of someone walking past City Hall is treated differently from a set-up with tripods, lights and cables across a footway.

The harbour estate and Titanic Quarter

The roads around Titanic Quarter look public but are not. Northern Ireland Screen’s code states that the Belfast Harbour estate, including the roads around Titanic Quarter, is private land, so filming and any road restrictions there are arranged with Belfast Harbour Police rather than the council. Belfast Harbour’s application form asks for the dates, the number of people on site, vehicle registrations, any props and a map of the areas required, and it commits to a response within five working days. The form also warns that work in Titanic Quarter may need the approval of individual leaseholders as well, which matters if you want a particular building’s frontage in shot.

Queen’s University campus

Queen’s University Belfast handles requests through a Permission to Film form, which goes to a University Filming Committee before a contract is issued. The university charges a site filming fee plus VAT, limits filming during term time to avoid disruption, and uses a separate authorisation form for drones.

George Best Belfast City Airport

The airport requires at least seven working days’ notice, and all filming must be authorised and accompanied by its communications team. Security procedures cannot be filmed, staff and passengers cannot be filmed or interviewed without written permission, and airline branding needs the operator’s agreement. Productions also submit a risk assessment, a schedule and a public liability insurance certificate.

National Trust and other heritage sites

The National Trust does not sign location contracts drawn up by production companies. It issues its own approved contract, and the code makes clear that a crew which does not sign it will not be allowed to film on Trust property. Historic and environmentally sensitive sites also carry an expectation that plans are discussed well in advance and that before and after photographs are taken.

Road closures and street filming need 12 weeks’ notice

Any shoot that stops or restricts traffic on a public road or footpath needs a formal order, and the code asks for the application at least 12 weeks before filming. For most roads the district council is the authority; for motorways, the A12 Westlink and the A8(M) the Department for Infrastructure is responsible instead. Applications received less than six weeks before the proposed closure are unlikely to be approved, because the public consultation period is set in law.

The application must include a full traffic management plan, carried out by qualified personnel holding £10 million of public liability cover, and the authority recovers the full cost of making the order from the applicant. Productions can start the process through Northern Ireland Screen’s road closures page. A shoot that stays off the road but needs traffic held on an adjacent street applies separately to the Department for Infrastructure under Article 7 of the Road Traffic Regulations (Northern Ireland) Order 1997, with the same 12 week lead time.

Smaller street work still has rules. Parking production vehicles on yellow lines or in residents’ bays, placing a cherry picker or camera track on the road, or moving street furniture all need council and Department for Infrastructure (Roads) permission. On footpaths, cables must be lifted to 2.6 metres or covered with matting, bus stops and bus lanes must stay clear, and emergency access must be kept open throughout.

For a typical business video this usually means designing the shoot around the footpath rather than the road. Shooting from the pavement with a small crew, out of peak hours and with no equipment on the carriageway, avoids the closure process entirely and keeps the timeline within a few weeks.

Drone footage over the harbour needs air traffic control approval

Belfast Harbour states that the entire harbour estate lies inside the exclusion zone around George Best Belfast City Airport. Its drone application will be rejected without written authority from the airport’s air traffic control, and that requirement applies irrespective of the size or weight of the drone. Only the Operational Planning Sergeant of Belfast Harbour Police can then authorise the flight.

The national rules changed on 1 January 2026. Anyone flying a drone of 100 grams or more now needs a Flyer ID from the Civil Aviation Authority’s free online test, and an Operator ID is required for drones of 100 grams or more that carry a camera, which covers every drone used for filming. New drones sold in the UK carry a UK class mark that sets the rules for how they can be flown.

Airport restriction zones are not limited to the harbour, so the pilot should check the planned flight path against the restriction maps before quoting. When you hire a drone operator, ask to see their Operator ID, Flyer ID and insurance, and ask who will apply for the airport and landowner permissions; our guide to drone videography for business explains where aerial footage earns its cost.

Local crews and studios can be booked without bringing anyone in

Belfast has a working crew base built on years of film and television production in the city, and a business shoot can be crewed entirely from it. Northern Ireland Screen runs a Screen Industry Database that connects productions with local crew, production companies, facilities and post-production services, and registration is open to people and companies based in Northern Ireland.

Most corporate interview days run with a small crew: a director who often operates the main camera, a second camera operator or sound recordist, and someone handling lighting and releases. A larger brand film adds a producer, a gaffer and hair and make-up. Northern Ireland Screen’s code expects the current PACT and BECTU agreements to form the basis of freelance crew employment, which gives you a reference point when you compare day rates.

When weather or permissions rule out a location, a studio removes both problems. Belfast’s studios, including the virtual production stages at Studio Ulster beside Belfast Harbour, allow a set or an environment to be built indoors, and smaller hire studios across the city suit interviews and product work.

Ciaran Connolly, founder of ProfileTree, describes the benefit for local firms in terms of where the budget goes. ‘Belfast pairs serious creative talent with infrastructure that most cities its size simply do not have. For local businesses, that means telling their story to a genuinely high standard, without sending the budget across the water.’

Footage is only half the job. If the film will feed a YouTube channel or a wider content plan, our video marketing service covers distribution and video SEO across the UK, so the shoot plan and the publishing plan can be agreed together.

People on camera need consent, and children need a licence

Everyone identifiable on camera should sign a release before filming, including your own staff. Footage of an identifiable person is personal data under UK GDPR, so a written release that states where the film will be used protects both the business and the people who appear in it.

Children are a separate legal category. The Education Authority issues performance licences for children in Northern Ireland who take part in broadcast performances, including online streaming, and its Children in Entertainment and Employment Team asks for applications at least 30 days before the first day of filming. The code warns that filming without a required licence is unlawful.

The code also asks productions to notify neighbouring residents and businesses likely to be affected, in writing and at least one week before filming, with a contact name and number. Filming between 11pm and 7am must be reported to the council in advance.

Film tax credits do not cover promotional video

The UK’s Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit supports qualifying films and television programmes, and some Belfast guides list its rates as though any production could claim them. HMRC’s Creative Industries Expenditure Credit Manual lists advertisements and other promotional material among the excluded programmes, so a company brand film, recruitment video or product demonstration does not qualify.

Northern Ireland Screen’s production funding is aimed at film, television, animation and games content rather than company marketing. Budget a business shoot on its own costs, and treat any claim that a tax credit will reduce them with caution. The same exclusion applies to TV and online advert production in Northern Ireland, even when the advert is shot to broadcast standard.

A workable timeline for a Belfast business shoot

The longest lead time in the plan sets the shoot date. Most business videos sit at the short end because they avoid roads, drones and children; adding any one of those moves the earliest possible date out by weeks.

In practice

The following example is hypothetical. A manufacturer in north Belfast wants a recruitment film with interviews on its own factory floor, a walking shot on the Titanic Quarter waterfront and a drone shot of the harbour at sunrise. The factory interviews need only the company’s own consent and staff releases. The walking shot falls on the harbour estate, so it goes through Belfast Harbour Police, and the drone shot needs written approval from George Best Belfast City Airport’s air traffic control before Belfast Harbour Police will consider it.

Nothing in that plan touches a public road, so no closure order is needed and the shoot could be booked within three to four weeks of a signed brief. If the client later asked for a crowd scene on a city centre street, the earliest date would move to 12 weeks out, which is the point at which most businesses choose a different shot.

Send us the location list before you book a crew

The cheapest change to any shoot is the one made at the planning stage, before a date is fixed around a permission that cannot arrive in time. Write down every place you want to film and what happens in each shot, and the ProfileTree video team will tell you which permissions apply, how long they take and whether a different shot would get you the same result sooner. Call 028 9568 0364 or email agency@profiletree.com with your list.

Questions about filming in Belfast