Working with the UK government to maintain a vibrant film industry, collaborating with partners on major projects in Europe and the US, helping cast and crew travel with their pets — it is all in a day’s work for the British Film Commission (BFC).
One of the BFC’s biggest achievements of recent months has been to secure an essential business rates relief for English studios.
As of July 5, the UK has a new Labour government but the work the BFC does with various government departments and the party-neutral civil servants who run them, continues uninterrupted.
BFC senior policy advisor James Butler leads BFC efforts on briefing the government on policy matters to ensure the UK remains an attractive prospect for inward investment film and high-end TV (HETV) production.
“This may either be in the context of a new issue that arises – which happened around business rates for studios – or around a potential opportunity to drive growth through the modernisation of policy, such as the creative sector tax reliefs’ transformation into the new Audio Visual Expenditure Credit (AVEC),” Butler explains.
A former civil servant — he worked on film policy within DCMS for 10 years prior to joining the BFC in 2021 — Butler says the BFC is both reactive and proactive. “We deal with urgent, project-specific issues as they arise, and we also work with government to improve the overall policy landscape for inward investment film and HETV over the longer term on a more strategic basis.”
One recent example saw the BFC make the case to the then-Conservative-run Department for Transport to make it easier to close roads for the purposes of filming in England. “Some authorities already had local legislation in place, particularly in the south east, but it was not country-wide, and this was harming the potential for greater production activity in the regions,” Butler explains.
The change is expected to help other nations follow suit in what is a devolved policy area.
One big challenge is that policy often struggles to keep up with the rapid changes to the film and HETV landscape.
“This has been particularly noticeable with the increase in HETV production activity in recent year, with the UK at the forefront of this growth,” says Butler. “Productions working here increasingly wanted to keep their options open as to whether to qualify as a British film or a TV show, but they were being forced to decide at the outset by the tax relief architecture, and risked losing relief if they changed their minds later.”
Aware the rigidity of the system was impacting on UK competitiveness, the BFC – which was instrumental in the introduction of the HETV relief back in 2013 – made a successful case to the government to allow projects to change track, should they wish to, later in the production process. “It was a small, technical change, nothing headline-grabbing, but it was warmly welcomed by our inward investors as a sign that the government was responsive and understood their business needs,” Butler notes.
Since then the BFC has helped advise the government on AVEC, the forthcoming enhanced incentive for visual effects and highlighted the benefits of the new Independent Film Tax Credit from an inward investment perspective.
A joined-up approach
The BFC also places great importance on sustainability, mental health advocacy and a joined-up approach across the nations and regions together with maintaining the UK’s relationship with Europe, the US and beyond.
“Our European work has escalated in recent years as the dual result of Brexit and Covid,” notes Samantha Perahia, head of production UK at the BFC.
Perahia worked in theatre stage management and in film and television production, post-production and locations before joining the BFC in 2004. “We, as the BFC, know that the UK is exponentially more valuable as a production destination if we also act as a hub or a jumping off point for filming in other European jurisdictions.”
Perahia says you only have to look at some of the biggest film and TV titles — Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon, franchises including Jurassic World, Fast & Furious, Bond and Mission: Impossible — to acknowledge the BFC’s drive to be a production hub and European gateway.
“It’s in all our interests to ensure that productions can move between our jurisdictions and work across jurisdictions as seamlessly as possible,” she says. “Our Memoranda of Understanding [MoU] and associated activities have helped develop and secure those relationships with our fellow film commissions across Europe.”
Closer to home, collaboration with the nations and regions is built into all BFC activities, policies, strategies and deliverables. Early work with clients new to the UK often involves raising awareness and understanding of the opportunities presented by working with and in the six other UK production hubs outside the southeast of England.
Each of these jurisdictions have demonstrable experience of supporting major scripted productions, with their own studios or stage space and, crucially, a local crew base, as well as access to incredibly diverse locations and other essential infrastructure.
“Beyond this, we advise on every aspect of what a production might need,” explains Perahia. “This could be anything from UK-wide studio and stage space availability, location enquiries in partnership with our national and regional screen agency partners [Creative Wales, Filming in England, Film London, Northern Ireland Screen and Screen Scotland], production office crew availability via The Production Guild of Great Britain and introductions to crew representatives and below-the-line agents.
“We also advise on other policy areas including visas, Permitted Development Rights and planning for location filming, working with children or animals, drones legislations, smoking legislation – you name it, we’ve worked on it.”
The BFC also boasts a dedicated US office and team in Los Angeles. There is a regular familiarisation trip (FAM) which invites US executives to immerse themselves in the UK film and HETV industry, to visit facilities and meet industry professionals throughout all the nations and regions.
“The FAM gets these executives fully immersed into what it is like to produce scripted content in the UK. They carry forward all the relationships they make on the trip and when they have a specific project for which they are considering options, they have the resources to explore, taking a pass at a UK budget or to discuss working hours for UK crews,” explains Los Angeles-based BFC executive Kattie Kotok, a former US production and acquisitions high flyer.
“We have helped secure a number of projects for the UK through the FAM trips – some we are working with right now.”
On a more granular level, an enquiry Perahia and her team has had many times over the years relates to international talent bringing their pets into the UK. “People spend months and months away from their homes and understandably they want their pets with them,” she notes. “We can also advise them on that!”
