Amsterdam a popular movie destination; 5 requests to film per day

Amsterdam is a very popular destination for making movies. The city receives about five requests per day to film. It shoots many of them down, allowing only 80 movies to be made in the Dutch capital per year, NH Nieuws reports.

The municipality’s film committee has one main objective: to ensure that Amsterdam residents don’t experience too much inconvenience,” Emiel de Booij of the committee told the broadcaster. “I always say: You want to film in a residential area, but the intention is not for the residents to live on a film set.’ We find that very important.”

Some of the requests are quite remarkable, De Booij said. “They wanted to close off Vijzelstraat for the entire day. How do you think we could arrange that? And why would I want to arrange that?”

There’s no standard fee to film in Amsterdam. The filming itself is free. But other costs mount up quite quickly. The Hollywood film The Riders, starring Brad Pitt, recently accumulated about €25,000 in parking costs alone.

Movie makers also need an object permit if they want to temporarily place something in public space, such as film equipment, building materials, or a container. The municipality calculates the price based on the size of the object.

The city cannot comment on what movie makers pay to the capital. “What we can say is that Amsterdam is expensive compared to other cities,” Emiel said. But because the city is “very beautiful,” the high price tag doesn’t stop the requests.