A crew costs us more than it pays, unless the day is priced properly.
Location hire on a farm that is already on television. What a crew actually does to a working day, what we charge for it, and why the answer between June and September is almost always no.
What a crew does to a farm day.
A small stills shoot is four people, a van and about an hour of somebody’s attention. That is genuinely easy and we charge accordingly.
A drama unit is forty people, eleven vehicles, a generator, a catering truck and a request to move the sheep. It occupies the yard, blocks the shop deliveries, needs somebody from here walking with them all day for safety, and leaves the track in a state.
Both are called filming and they are not remotely the same thing, which is why there are three rates rather than one.
The three rates.
| Kind | Day rate | What it involves | Answer between June and September |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stills, up to 6 people | £650 | One escort for part of the day, no vehicle movements | Usually yes |
| Small unit, up to 15 | £2,400 | One escort all day, parking in the yard, no livestock moves | Rarely |
| Full unit, 15 to 45 | £6,500 | Two escorts, a road plan, a livestock plan and making good | No |
| Drone, any size | +£300 | And a copy of your operational authorisation, which we do check | Case by case |
| Student or documentary, small | £0 | If it is genuinely small and genuinely not for a brand | Sometimes |
| Anything using the Diddly Squat name | Not available | That is a licensing question, not a location one | No |
What a location fee covers.
Included
- A named escort for the whole time you are on site
- Parking in the yard, within reason, for the unit
- Power from the barn, three-phase, 32A
- A risk assessment from us to sit alongside yours
- Somewhere to put the catering truck that is not the car park
Not available
- Any right to the programme, its footage, its name or its branding
- Any appearance by anybody who lives or works here
- Access during harvest, drilling or lambing, at any price
- Livestock moved for a shot. They move when they need to
- Exclusive use of the shop or the car park on a trading day
- Overnight anything, because nobody stays here
Why the name is not for hire here.
A location fee buys a field. It does not buy the name, the logo, the programme, an association or an implication of one, and the most common thing a production wants is precisely that implication.
Anything involving the name is a licensing question, it is a different conversation with different people and different lawyers, and it is dealt with elsewhere on this site rather than by somebody agreeing to a day rate in a yard.
Filming, at a glance.
Three rates
Stills, small unit, full unit.
No in summer
A full unit is not happening June to September.
Escort included
And it is not optional.
Name not included
That is licensing, and it is elsewhere.
The licensing question.
What the name is worth, what it costs to lend, and what it costs to get back.
What people actually ask.
The two questions this page gets most, answered without a support ticket.
Public filings, published rankings and press reporting, each labelled on the page as a verified record, a founder claim or a third-party estimate.
The words are ours. The brands are not, and nothing here is licensed.
