HOW EARLY SHOULD YOU START PLANNING A FILM PRODUCTION IN NEPAL?

The right answer depends on what you are filming, where you are going and how much of Nepal the production needs to move.

People often ask how early they should start planning a production in Nepal, as though there is a standard answer sitting somewhere in a production manual.

Six weeks? Eight weeks? Three months?

The honest answer is that the number of shooting days tells us surprisingly little.

A two day commercial in Kathmandu and a two week production moving through Mustang, conservation areas and mountain villages may both be described as “a shoot in Nepal”. They are not remotely the same production. The real question is how many things have to be solved before the crew arrives.

A production with one location, a small crew and equipment hired in Kathmandu can move quite quickly. Add heritage sites, large crews, casting, imported equipment, restricted areas, helicopters, high altitude travel, multiple regions or a fixed festival date, and the planning window changes very quickly.

This is why I would rather see a production brief early than be given a number of shooting days and asked for a quote.

THE SHOOTING DAYS ARE THE SMALL PART

A client might say, “We are shooting for three days.” That sounds manageable.

Then we discover that there are six locations, two of them outside Kathmandu, forty people coming from overseas, twenty local crew, a particular camera package, a drone, local casting, a heritage site, two vehicles for each department, accommodation outside the capital and a flight to Pokhara.

The three shooting days have suddenly become a much larger production. This is where pre production earns its keep.

Our production planning and management in Nepal is not simply about putting dates into a calendar. It is about finding out what has to happen before those dates can become realistic.

Where does the equipment come from?

Who needs to be there?

Which locations are actually available?

What permissions are required?

How long does it take to move between them?

What happens if the weather changes?

What does the crew need to know before arriving?

What can be done locally and what needs to come from outside Nepal?

The earlier these questions are asked, the cheaper and easier most of the answers become.

SOME PRODUCTIONS REALLY CAN MOVE QUICKLY

Not every project needs months of preparation. A small editorial shoot in Kathmandu with a local crew, locally available equipment and straightforward locations may be organised relatively quickly. A documentary team arriving with a small camera package and a clear subject can also move faster than a large commercial production.

There is no reason to turn a simple production into a six month exercise simply because somebody has written that six months is “best practice”. But even a small production benefits from an early conversation if the dates are fixed or the location is important.

A location that looks available today may not be available on your shooting date. A particular camera package may already be booked. A specialist crew member may be working elsewhere. A festival may have changed the entire character of an area.

The smaller the production, the less room there usually is to absorb an unexpected problem.

THE FIRST THING WE WANT TO SEE IS NOT THE CALL SHEET

Give us the brief.

A script is useful. A treatment is useful. A storyboard is useful. A moodboard, reference film, shot list or even a good description of what you are trying to make can be enough to start.

Nepal's official filming procedure requires foreign productions to submit material such as the script or filming story, storyboard for television commercials or synopsis for documentaries, along with foreign crew details, an itinerary specifying dates and locations and an equipment list with values for customs clearance. That is another reason not to leave planning until the week before the shoot. The production information needed for permissions is connected to the production information needed for budgeting, scheduling, customs, locations and logistics. One decision starts affecting another very quickly.

A good local production partner should be looking at those connections rather than treating each requirement as a separate box.

PERMITS ARE NOT ALWAYS THE LONGEST PART

People often assume that the permit is the main reason to start early. Sometimes it is. But the permit itself may not be what holds the production up. The bigger problem can be discovering that the chosen location requires another consent, another authority or another conversation before the filming permission can be completed.

A shoot in an ordinary Kathmandu location is one thing. A production involving heritage sites, protected areas, restricted regions or aerial filming can involve several layers of coordination. And sometimes the production does not yet know enough about its own plan to make those conversations properly. This is why film permits and government coordination in Nepal should be treated as part of production planning rather than paperwork at the end.

The earlier the location list becomes real, the earlier we can identify what else sits underneath it.

LOCATION SCOUTING CAN EASILY CHANGE THE WHOLE SCHEDULE

There is also a difference between finding a location and confirming a location. You can find a beautiful village in five minutes online. You may need several days to work out whether a forty person crew can actually operate there.

How far is the vehicle allowed to go?

How far does the equipment have to be carried?

Where does the crew stay?

What happens to the location if it rains?

Is there enough space for lighting?

Can the local community accommodate the production?

Are there restrictions on generators?

Does the owner agree?

Is the visual quality actually what the director imagined?

Our location scouting work across Nepal often begins well before the production schedule is locked because the scout can change the schedule itself. A location that looks wonderful but requires a six hour movement may not be the right location for a production with three other scenes that day. Another location may give you ninety percent of the visual result with much better access.

Finding that out before the call sheet is written is considerably more useful than discovering it at 5:30 in the morning.

KATHMANDU AND THE HIMALAYAS HAVE VERY DIFFERENT CLOCKS

Kathmandu gives a production a degree of flexibility that becomes much harder once you move into remote Nepal. Crew, equipment suppliers, accommodation, transport, workshops, production offices, casting and other services are concentrated around the capital. That does not mean everything is instantly available, but it does give the production a much larger pool of practical options.

Once the production moves into the mountains, the clock changes.

A vehicle may only reach a certain point. Equipment may need to be carried. Flights become part of the schedule. Weather can affect movement. Accommodation becomes limited. Medical planning becomes more important. Communications may change. A lost day can become much more expensive than a lost day in Kathmandu.

For remote and high altitude production in Nepal, I would always rather have more time than less. Not because mountains are mysterious. Because mountains are very good at exposing optimistic schedules.

EQUIPMENT CAN ADD ANOTHER CLOCK

If everything is being sourced locally, equipment planning can be relatively straightforward. If a production needs a particular camera package, specialist lenses, large lighting and grip systems or technical equipment that is not available in the required quantity, we may need to bring it into Nepal. That introduces another chain of decisions.

Equipment lists have to be confirmed. The production permit documentation needs to be aligned. Customs and temporary import arrangements have to be considered. Transport has to be organised. The equipment needs to arrive early enough to be checked rather than going directly from the airport to the first shooting location.

For larger productions, equipment can also come across the border from India by truck. That can be an excellent solution, but it is still a logistical operation. This is why our customs and equipment clearance support starts before the flight cases start moving. There is very little point in discovering at the airport that the equipment list has changed since the permit paperwork was prepared.

SOME PRODUCTIONS ARE REALLY ABOUT THE DATE

There are productions where the location can move but the date cannot.

A festival. A particular cultural ceremony. A seasonal landscape. A sporting event. A flowering period. A wildlife behaviour. A specific weather condition. Those productions should begin with the date and work backwards.

If the entire creative idea depends on one particular event happening on one particular day, there is no useful production advice in saying that autumn is generally a good time to film in Nepal. The event is the schedule. The same applies to commercial productions built around a very specific landscape. If the visual concept depends on snow, a particular crop, a dry landscape or a certain mountain view, the season becomes part of the creative brief.

That is when commercial production in Nepal becomes much more than arranging a crew and a camera.

LARGE PRODUCTIONS NEED TIME FOR PEOPLE TO BECOME A TEAM

There is another part of pre production that does not appear neatly on a permit application.

People.

A large production may require department heads, local crew, fixers, drivers, casting teams, security, medical support, technical specialists and additional hands that only become obvious once the locations and schedule are understood. The best people are not necessarily sitting at home waiting for your call. If the production requires a particular Key Grip, Gaffer, production designer, local fixer or specialist operator, availability matters.

We have seen this repeatedly on international productions. The crew structure is not decided independently of the location. The location, equipment and schedule tell us what crew structure makes sense.

That is why our crew and casting support in Nepal is normally discussed alongside the actual production rather than as a separate shopping list.

LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED ON REAL PRODUCTIONS

The difference becomes obvious when you look at actual work.

The Nippon Paint commercial involved a single shooting day across Bhaktapur and Patan, but the production brought together a very large international and local operation, hundreds of extras, elephants, substantial equipment and heritage permissions. The final day looked fast because much of the difficult work had happened before the cameras rolled.

Black Narcissus was another scale entirely. Remote Himalayan locations had to support international cast and crew, equipment, constructed environments, animals, medical support and extensive logistics. That kind of production cannot sensibly be planned as though Nepal were a studio five minutes from an airport.

Then there was Panasonic VIERA, where a 108 inch television had to reach the Jomsom region and ultimately become part of a production in a location without conventional road access.

The Panasonic production in Jomsom and Thini is a useful reminder that sometimes the unusual object in the equipment list is the thing that dictates the logistics.

And Powerade took the idea further still. A remote Mustang plateau became the site of a major international commercial with more than 550 people involved on location, including players and hundreds of extras, with medical and emergency arrangements operating alongside the shoot.

These productions did not succeed because somebody found a good location two weeks before filming. They succeeded because the production was treated as an interconnected system.

SO HOW EARLY IS EARLY ENOUGH?

For a straightforward urban production, a few weeks may be enough if the brief is clear and the required resources are available. For a standard commercial, documentary or photography production involving several locations, I would be much more comfortable with several weeks of proper preparation rather than trying to compress everything into the final fortnight.

For heritage locations, wildlife, large crews, complex casting, imported equipment or multiple regions, start earlier.

For restricted areas, high altitude work, helicopters or productions where weather can seriously affect movement, think in months rather than weeks.

And if you have a fixed event, seasonal requirement or very specific visual condition, start as soon as the creative idea is serious enough to discuss. There is no magic number because there is no standard Nepal production.

THE BEST TIME TO START IS BEFORE YOU THINK YOU NEED A PRODUCTION COMPANY

This is probably the most useful advice I can give. Do not wait until the dates are fixed, the flights are booked and the director is asking where the cars are. Bring the local production team into the conversation while the production is still flexible.

At that point we can tell you that the beautiful location in the treatment may be impractical. We can suggest another one. We can tell you that the camera package should come from abroad. We can find out that it can be rented in Kathmandu instead. We can tell you that the shoot needs an extra day because of the movement. We can tell you that a particular permit needs to be considered before the location is locked.

That is useful production information. It is much less useful after the decisions have already been made. Our line production services in Nepal are designed around exactly this stage of the process: taking the creative idea, working out what Nepal will require to make it possible, and building the practical production around it.

THERE IS A SIMPLE WAY TO THINK ABOUT IT

If you are filming one scene in Kathmandu with a small local team, you may not need months.

If you are bringing an international crew into Nepal for a commercial, documentary or television production, give yourself enough time to properly understand the country before the schedule becomes immovable.

If you are going remote, add more time. If you are bringing equipment, add more time. If you need restricted areas, heritage sites, wildlife, helicopters or large crews, add more time again. And if somebody tells you that every production in Nepal needs exactly eight weeks, ask them what happens when your production is completely different from the last one.

We have worked on productions that moved quickly and productions that took months to build. The difference was never simply how complicated the paperwork looked. It was how much of Nepal the production needed to make work. The earlier we can see the whole picture, the more choices we have. And in production, having choices before the first shooting day is usually worth far more than having to solve the same problems after the first call time.