Knowing your rights doesn't mean you can't show people courtesy and showing courtesy might get you further.

And it surely depends upon what you're filming. If you're on a tight schedule, you want to minimise interruption of people trying to stop you. I accept if you're Mark you might actually want some confrontational footage with a neanderthal luddite, but realise this is potentially at the expense of getting the job you went out to do done.

I've requested permission from the council twice. Both times by an email addressed to a specific councillor and both times I've received an immediate response. If you're filming in a public place, according to Guru, you do't even need permission. So state this. Say you understand you are entitled to film, but want to inform the council and want to check that you won't be interfereing with anything else happening on that date at that location (road works etc) and that you are letting them know as a courtesy. That puts the ball in their court to object if they dare. There's no waiting for council meetings etc.

It's worth remembering that Councillors depend on your vote and those of others so want to look good. They also claim to support local arts and businesses so it's not going to look good on them to have stood in your way. Local press love stories where the council trample on the little man and the councillors know this.

As I said I've done this twice. First time we got a few funny looks - especially as we had an 80 year old stripped down to his underpants in October. The police arrived soon after we'd finished shooting, but had they turned up earlier, a copy of our email from the Council would have expedited matters, I'm sure.

On the second occasion, we wanted to film in the car park of a local leisure centre. We'd got permissiom from the councillor first THEN approached the leisure centre manager. His email reply was rather telling. It began along the lines of "As you've already got permission from the council I can't stand in your way..." and went on to make us fill in all sorts of forms about not using images of children etc. The point is if we'd just turned up and filmed this guy clearly would have done his damndest to stop us filming.

On the same shoot, we recorded outside the Council Offices which share the same car park. Enter officious woman from reception "you can't film here". "Oh yes we can" - show her the email exchanges. "Hold on" phone call to another councillor. He comes down, asks what we're doing, looks at email. "Oh jolly good show". We've now got TWO councillors on side. Continue fimilng uniterrupted.

Remember COUNCILLORS NEED VOTES and do not want to be seen getting in the way of local businesses or arts.

And Nikosony, I wasn't suggesting you get the COUNCIL to get in touch with the residents, I was suggesting you might, if it might add an interesting perspective to your film. I suspect you'd get a some positive response - everyone wants to be a star these days.

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Tim