LARS VON LENNEP

FILMING IN GERMANY...SOME DETAILS AND HINTS FOR PRODUCERS

I have earned an international reputation as fixer Germany through contributing to international movies such as The Reader, Never Look Away or Undine and to a wide range of TV features and documentaries. In Germany, the media scene is decentralised meaning several cities offer world-class production environments with gifted crews, rental houses, post production companies and studio facilities. In this article, I will try to give a first glimpse in some important film production topics.

LARS VON LENNEP

LOCATIONS & FACILITIES IN GERMANY

COST OF LOCATIONS & FILMING PERMITS

Endless variety of settings

Germany offers one of the most diverse filming locations in Europe as here you will find islands, seas, mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, forests, medieval ruins, historic castles and fortresses. As an opposite, there are modern industrial centres, urban architecture as well edgy urban surroundings. Several studio facilities in different cities offer sound stages, art departments, prop shops and attractive production sites for external shoots, historical recreation, on/under water or green screen shoots. As I'm active as a production fixer and location manager since more than 15 years, I'm happy for having created one of the most comprehensive data banks for locations in Germany. Often I have supported projects during their research phase and their location scouts. My services as fixer always include all tasks to secure smooth filming, such as shooting permits and location management. Location owners in Germany are usually very reliable and positive about renting our their properties for filming.

The main cities for filming in Germany

Filming hotspots in Germany are Berlin in the East (near to Poland), Munich in the South (near to Austria and the mountains)and Cologne in the West (near to Netherlands). In all these three cities you as a producer will find all crew and facilities you may think of. Cologne, as the smallest city of these three, makes filming much more complicated, because neither the city council nor the residents are in big favour of filming. When you are interested in studio capacities, I'm working with this facilities:

Berlin

(TV-Studios): Studio Berlin Adlershof

(Movie Studios): Studio Babelsberg

Munich

(TV & Movie Studios): Studio Grünwald

Cologne

(TV & Movie Studios): MMC Studios

Berlin and Munich are traditional movie production hotspots, but Cologne is more focused on TV broadcast, shows, features, series and documentaries. Beside these cities, interesting filming locations can be found in Hamburg in the North (close to Denmark and the North Sea) and in Frankfurt in the centre of the country, but there the availabilities of crew and facilities isn't that much extended.

Costs of locations, permits and crews

When you are filming a documentary with a small crew on public spaces, camera on tripod only, you won't need expensive filming permits. Most of the cities in Germany issue some sort of a news/documentary filming permit that works for compact crews and will cost a small fee of approximately 100 USD. Rental costs for filming in a private location lets say a suburban family house will start around 3,500 USD/day. In addition, official fees will apply for blocking public street areas, parking production vehicles in the streets and so on. Following our example, such fee can be around 200 USD per day in a suburban area for a mid-sized feature film convoy.

When it comes to crew salaries and equipment rental, you can expect costs that are very similar to the US or UK. Due to local labour and tax laws, most of film crew isn't allowed to issue invoices to foreign production companies. They need to be employed by a local (Germany based) company that will invoice all the costs to you as a foreign producer. The German employer needs to pay additional 25% on top the crew salaries for mandatory insurances that you need to include in your budget. "Production Fixer Germany Lars von Lennep" is an enlisted company this is why I'm taking care for such accounting aspects as well.

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