The Benefits Of Filming
The Bucaneers
If you haven’t already sat down and watched Apple TV’s latest period drama then you are in for a treat.
Set in the 1870’s across England and New York, a group of young American heiresses travel over to London to start their search for the perfect English aristocratic husband - a period drama is right up my street. The costumes, and settings are beyond spectacular and the best bit of all is that it is all filmed here in Scotland!
Supposedly set down in Cornwall, London and New York, the filming actually took place in the Scottish Borders, from Glasgow, Dumfries & Galloway all the way across to East Lothian, The Borders, and Edinburgh. Make sure you watch it like a hawk and try to spot all the memorable locations from Bass Rock, Moray Place in Edinburgh, to Drumlanrig and University of Glasgow.
We have done a small bit of filming here, and we thought it might be fun to share our experiences and thoughts using this particular production as an example as it was quite a large and used a huge amount of local locations. The locations that were used at Preston Hall were The Temple, The Temple Field and The Walled Garden. Some of you may have spotted us, but we can be found in Episode 5 and I would probably say that we feature for about 15 minutes throughout the episode.
A bit of background to the production - the crew was about 200 people so you can imagine the amount of cars and equipment needed for it was quite vast. For our 15 minutes of fame, it took about 3-4 days of filming time. On top of that there are set up and take down days, or ‘strike’ days as they are known. Given the size of the crew and the scenes they were filming, they needed about 3 to 4 days either side of the filming. It is worth bearing in mind that the filming took place over a year so this was a fairly hefty production.
Nan and Guy in front of The Temple, Preston Hall
We have only ever had good experiences with filming and wanted to highlight some of the positive impacts that filming can have on either individuals or to life locally.
1. We hadn’t thought of this when we first started to undertake filming here, but it is one of the more important elements. It doesn’t just apply to us, but to any location used. This is the ‘use of local businesses’ where possible. For this production, the trades that benefitted from the filming taking place here were: local stonemasons fixing walls, different food vendors each day suppling food and drink to the cast and crew, local farmers as sheep trailers were hired for the ‘sparks’ or technicians, blacksmith who fixed an iron gate, haulage companies, hotels and accommodation facilities for members of the crew that travelled further, fencing companies, and a local scaffolding company. This is obviously a hugely beneficial cash injection into the local economy.
It is also worth noting that the crew was predominantly recruited as locally as possible providing a huge amount of employment to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas.
2. One of the more obvious things it does is highlight a location as a destination. In this case it showcased our Walled Garden, which we hope will have been seen by lots of people that haven’t seen it before both within the UK and further afield. This will undoubtedly attract new people to the area, that would come to visit and either stay with us or somewhere local, and visit other local attractions and use local shops and facilities.
3. Taking point 2 even further and when these individual locations are grouped together, it spotlights Midlothian and all that it has to offer, and then that celebrates Scotland as a whole. We were by no means the only placed used within Midlothian, Arniston and Newhailes were also featured. If you go a little wider and look at the extensive list of locations across Southern Scotland you will see all the areas that will have benefited from being included.
Visit Scotland has done a great article that highlights some of the other locations used in The Bucaneers.
4. This final point applies to any location that gets chosen for filming and that is the location fee paid for use of an area. While this generally goes to one person or business, it does then mean that it gets reinvested locally. From the filming we have done, it has enabled us to do new projects which means employing new people, buying materials, improving facilities, with the idea being to get more people to visit the area.
We have really enjoyed all the filming that we have done and found the crew a delight to work with. We were very lucky to get to work with such professional, and to be honest, nice people.