It's Now Easier to Make Movies and TV Shows in National Parks

Predicting the near future is frequently challenging, but there’s one reasonably safe bet you can make for the years to come: we’ll probably see an uptick in movies and television shows with scenes set on location in U.S. national parks. As The Hollywood Reporter‘s Winston Cho writes, President Biden recently signed a new law that opens the door to more location shooting in these parks — at least provided the crews are relatively small.

The Federal Interior Land Media Act — aka the “FILM Act” — was written to reduce the number of permits required to film in a national park. as Cho explains at THR, the permitting process varied depending on whether someone was recording film or video for personal or commercial use, which made regulating these matters challenging.

Looking at the text of the FILM Act, it looks like this law shifts the regulatory emphasis from the nature of the project to the number of people involved with filming it. One of the provisions notes that it applies only to projects where the crew on site is “fewer than 6 individuals” — meaning that a small crew could record footage on the go, in theory. Filming an action sequence around Old Faithful, though, is still verboten.

Professional associations received the news with enthusiasm. “We are so thankful that a bi-partisan coalition of lawmakers so clearly recognizes the importance of protecting the freedom to take pictures and film in our parks and other federal lands,” said Carey Wagner of the National Press Photographers Association in a statement.

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As The Hollywood Reporter‘s analysis of the law points out, the regulations that the FILM Act amends have been on the books since 2000. And in the coming years, it’ll be interesting to see what certain filmmakers will do with their expanded access — and what new sides of the national parks we’ll see as a result.