Filming in Thailand

As with most places around the world there are regulations concerning filming here which you will need to adhear to. They are mostly common sence.

Filming during the wet season

Filming Permit

As a foreign production you will need a permit from the Thai film board in order to shoot here. This is normally fairly straightforward to arrange; for commercials (also most documentaries, TV and pop promos), there is now a 'one stop service' so we can normally get the permit issued within two days although it is better to allow three. For feature length productions, TV dramas, etc. we will need to arrange for the script to be translated before applying for permission, three weeks is a reasonable time scale for the process providing there is nothing controversial in the script.

Permission is generally not a problem unless the script is considered to be; harmful to the reputation of Thailand, (especially the monarchy here), Buddhism or it is considered in any way pornographic.

Environmental issues (particularly with regard to filming on historic sites or in national parks) can also sometimes cause issues.

We are happy to advise and can generally give you a good idea if anything in your script is liable to cause problems before applying for your permission.

If you are bringing in equipment requiring an import permit (camera equipment, armoury, pyrotechnics etc.) or want to apply to film on historic sites you need to have the filming permit in place before you can make an application, it's a good idea to sort it as early as possible.

Once permission is granted you are required to have a Thai film board representative on set to ensure that what you are shooting follows the guidelines, this is not expensive (approx $60 USD a day) and in fact the representatives can sometimes be quite helpful in sorting out other local filming issues.

Foreign companies are not allowed to film here without using a service production company who are regestered with the film board (as we are) to co-ordinate.

Thai Work Permit

Visas

For most people coming from the UK, Europe or the USA you won't need a visa if you are staying less than 30 days.

However if you are staying longer than 30 days or will be working for more than 15 days while you're here we'll need to arrange a non-immigrant visa for you, again this is quite straight forward and only takes a few days but it needs to be done before you arrive here. 

If you're working for more than 15 days you'll also need a work permit which we will arrange once you've arrived however you must arrive in Thailand on a non-immigrant visa in order to get the work permit issued. If you're working for less than 15 days we'll get a letter of permission and this can be issued on any type of visa.

Other permissions

In many cases we will also need to liaise with other government departments including the national parks and forestry departments, the military, the police, customs, immigration, internal revenue and others to get all the permissions you need.

It is a little more complicated than we would like, however, we have experience, some contacts and try to make things happen with the minimum of fuss.

Further information

More information on filming permissions and permits is available on the Thai Film Office's official website here.

You can download the film board pamphlet on their 'One stop service' here (right click, 'save target as' to download the file 1.1Mb).