Where to Find the Best Music Video Locations

Discover the best music video locations around the world and learn how to choose, scout, permit, and budget a location that fits your song’s story. From iconic heritage sites and natural landscapes to urban streets, studios, and private estates, explore practical location-scouting strategies for a cinematic shoot.

Music video locations fall into five practical categories: urban streets, natural landscapes, industrial spaces, private estates, and controlled studios, each suited to a different song and budget. Before you scout anything, run through three moves: match the setting to your song’s story, confirm you can actually access and shoot there legally, and budget for the hidden logistics that heritage or remote sites always add. Roundups from outlets like Thrillist consistently return to the same handful of sites, from St Pancras to Studland Bay, because they photograph well and have a track record of granting access. Image Studio has built cinematic music videos around exactly this kind of location logic for over 14 years.

• Match the location to the song’s emotional register before anything else.
• Confirm permit and access requirements early, especially at historic or protected sites.
• Budget for transport, insurance, and crew logistics before falling for a beautiful backdrop.

Key Takeaways

The strongest music videos pair a location that fits the song’s story with early permit clearance and a budget that accounts for remote or heritage-site logistics.

Table of Contents

• Iconic Music Video Locations Worth Studying or Visiting
• Which Type of Location Fits Your Song?
• How Do You Actually Scout a Music Video Location?
• What Permits Do Music Video Shoots Actually Need?
• What Drives the Budget on a Location Shoot?
• What Location Scouting Actually Looks Like on a Real Shoot
• Do You Need More Than a Filming Permit?
• How Do You Negotiate a Location Fee Without Losing the Site?
• Bringing a Location Vision to Life
• Sources for Further Location Research
• What the Location Debate Gets Wrong

Iconic Music Video Locations Worth Studying or Visiting

Certain locations show up again and again in music video history because they solve a visual problem better than almost anywhere else. Here is what makes each one work, and what to know before you try to book it.

1. St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, London. Its Victorian Gothic staircase and red brick facade give a song instant grandeur without a set designer touching a thing. Hotel filming almost always requires a private booking through the venue’s events team rather than a city permit, and rates reflect its five-star status, so budget accordingly.
2. Studland Bay, Dorset, UK. Coldplay shot “Yellow” here in a single unbroken take at sunrise, and that choice was not incidental. The beach’s flat sand and open horizon reward early morning light, when the tide and crowds cooperate. Shoot in the off-season shoulder months, and check tide tables the same week as your shoot, not months ahead.
3. Château de Fontainebleau, France. Lana Del Rey used its gilded interiors for exactly the faded-royalty mood the song needed. As a state-owned historic monument, Fontainebleau involves a formal permit process with conservation officers reviewing lighting rigs and foot traffic, so expect a longer approval runway than a typical location.
4. Fort Henry, Kingston, Ontario. Fall Out Boy filmed here, drawn to the fort’s stone ramparts and commanding lake views. It operates as a public heritage attraction, which means shoot days often have to work around visitor hours or require a full site buyout, adding cost but simplifying crowd control.
5. Aït Benhaddou, Morocco. This fortified village has appeared in Gladiator and Game of Thrones, and its mudbrick towers read as ancient on camera because they genuinely are. As a UNESCO-recognized heritage site, construction of any kind, including temporary rigging, faces real restrictions, and location fixers typically negotiate access with the local community as much as any government office.
6. Four Aces Movie Ranch, California. This private ranch’s desert scrubland and vintage motel sets give productions an instant American road-trip aesthetic without location-hopping. Because it is privately owned, negotiations happen directly with ranch management, and availability is often more flexible than public land.
7. Vestrahorn and the Viking Village, Iceland. The jagged black-sand coastline beneath Vestrahorn mountain, paired with a purpose-built Viking film set nearby, delivers scale that few other locations match. Winter access is weather-dependent and daylight hours are short, so summer shoots are far more forgiving for crews without deep contingency budgets.
8. Oheka Castle, Long Island. Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” leaned on this Gold Coast mansion’s manicured grounds and grand facade. As a privately bookable estate that also operates as a hotel and event venue, Oheka offers more scheduling flexibility than a government-managed site, at a price that reflects its exclusivity.

Which Type of Location Fits Your Song?

The setting you choose shapes the story before a single lyric plays, so match location type to narrative intent rather than defaulting to whatever looks good on Instagram.

• Studio sets give you total control over lighting, weather is never a factor, and a cyclorama or green screen lets you build any world in post. This suits choreography-heavy videos where consistency matters more than texture.
• Urban locations bring energy, extras, and a sense of scale, but streets mean permits, crowd control, and sometimes a police liaison, particularly for anything involving vehicles or large crews.
• Industrial and warehouse spaces function as a blank canvas. Concrete floors and exposed steel take lighting rigs well and rarely fight your color grade, making them ideal for dance-forward or moody, minimal concepts.
• Natural landscapes deliver scale and emotional depth no set can fake, per standard scouting guidance used across the industry, but weather and remote access cut against tight schedules.
• Private estates offer an exclusive, controlled look with far easier access management than public land, though the location fee runs higher than almost any other category.

How Do You Actually Scout a Music Video Location?

Finding the right site starts online, long before anyone drives out to look at it in person.

1. Search location marketplaces first. Platforms like Peerspace and specialist services such as AVVAY list private and semi-private venues with photos, square footage, and booking terms upfront, which can save weeks compared to cold outreach.
2. Check local tourism and heritage boards. Regional film offices and heritage sites often publish filming guidelines directly, which tells you the permit process before you fall in love with a location that will not clear.
3. Use Google Street View for a first pass. It will not replace an on-site visit, but it quickly rules out locations with obvious problems: bad power access, dense traffic, or nearby construction.
4. Lean on location agencies for complex shoots. Agencies carry standing relationships with property owners and know which historic or protected sites actually say yes.
5. Run a scouting checklist on your shortlist: story fit, vehicle and crew access, parking, power availability, ambient noise, insurance requirements, drone restrictions, and nearby crew accommodation.

Image Studio typically coordinates local suppliers and location fixers directly rather than leaving a client to negotiate cold with property owners, which shortens the gap between a location idea and a locked shoot date.

Pro Tip: Call the location’s booking contact before you fall for the photos. A site that looks perfect online can carry restrictions, like no generators or no filming after 6 p.m., that only show up in a phone conversation.

What Permits Do Music Video Shoots Actually Need?

Public streets, protected natural areas, and UNESCO or historic sites almost always require a formal permit, while privately owned locations like ranches or estates typically just need a signed agreement with the owner. Heritage sites carry the longest lead times of any location category, and conservation offices reviewing sites like Fontainebleau often require documentation weeks in advance rather than days.

• Expect standard permit conditions covering shoot hours, crew headcount, liability insurance, and health and safety plans.
• Vehicle and equipment load in usually needs a specific access point approved in advance, particularly at fortified or walled sites like Fort Henry or Aït Benhaddou.
• Power is rarely guaranteed on historic or remote sites, so generators or battery rigs should be part of your access request, not an afterthought.
• Build in a buffer day for weather-dependent exteriors. Image Studio’s own production workflow schedules golden-hour shots across two consecutive mornings whenever a single shot carries the whole video, which absorbs a bad weather day without blowing the schedule.

What Drives the Budget on a Location Shoot?

A handful of line items determine most of a location shoot’s cost, and none of them is the location fee alone.

• Location fee and permit costs, which scale sharply at heritage or government-managed sites.
• Transport for cast, crew, and gear, especially to remote landscapes like Iceland or Morocco.
• Local crew hires, accommodation, and per diems for multi-day shoots.
• Insurance riders required by property owners or permitting bodies.
• Overtime, which remote or weather-delayed shoots tend to trigger more than urban ones.

Remote and heritage locations amplify almost every one of these costs at once, since a single travel day can add crew accommodation, transport, and overtime before a camera even rolls. Choosing a versatile site that can double for two scenes, scheduling off peak season, and dressing minimally instead of building out elaborate sets are the three levers that protect a budget without gutting the look.

What Location Scouting Actually Looks Like on a Real Shoot

Two production decisions tend to separate videos that look expensive from videos that actually cost less than expected. The first is choosing a location that can serve double duty, shooting a performance segment and a narrative segment in the same building changes the entire budget math. The second is treating the tech recce as non negotiable, not optional. Walking a heritage property or remote landscape before locking dates reveals load in points, power access, and parking constraints that a location photo never shows.

A missed generator hookup or a blocked loading dock on a heritage site can add a full day of labor cost to a shoot that looked simple on paper. Mapping vehicle access and power runs during the recce, before locking the date, is what prevents that.

Pro Tip: Always schedule a weather contingency day for exterior golden-hour shots, especially on remote landscapes. Losing the light once is a setback. Losing it with no buffer day is a reshoot.

Do You Need More Than a Filming Permit?

A filming permit clears you to be on a property, but it does not clear the legal risks that live inside the frame. Trademarked signage, branded storefronts, and recognizable logos in the background can trigger a rights issue even when the property owner said yes, particularly for videos intended for commercial or paid promotion rather than pure artistic release. Architectural landmarks are usually fine to film from a public sidewalk, but recreating a building’s interior character too closely in a commercial context has tripped up productions before.

Privacy adds a second layer entirely separate from property rights. Extras and bystanders visible in a shot, particularly at a public urban location, may need a release depending on how the footage gets used and where it airs. This becomes more pressing at crowded tourist locations, where a popular filming spot draws its own foot traffic that a crew cannot always control on shoot day.

Historic and heritage sites raise a third issue: many carry usage restrictions baked into their conservation agreements, meaning a location that grants a filming permit may still prohibit certain kinds of imagery, like anything implying damage or disrespect to the structure. None of this replaces legal counsel on a specific shoot, but treating “permit granted” and “legally clear” as two separate checkboxes, not one, avoids the costliest surprises.

How Do You Negotiate a Location Fee Without Losing the Site?

Location fees are rarely fixed the way a hotel room rate is, and most owners expect some back and forth, especially for independent or lower-budget productions.

Start by asking what the fee actually covers. A quoted rate sometimes includes site management staff, cleanup, and basic security, and sometimes it does not, so clarify before comparing two locations against each other. Shoulder-season or weekday dates almost always come in cheaper than weekend bookings, particularly at venues that also host events, like Oheka Castle. Offering a shorter, tightly scheduled shoot window can also move a fee, since owners weigh disruption to their regular operations as much as the dollar figure.

Get every term in writing before crew and gear show up, not after. A location agreement should specify the exact hours booked, cancellation and weather reschedule terms, who covers damage liability, and whether the fee includes access to power or requires a generator rental. For heritage or government-managed sites, ask early whether the permit fee and the property usage fee are separate line items, since treating them as one number is a common budgeting mistake.

Reference a comparable location’s public rate when you have one. It rarely gets you a discount outright, but it signals you have done homework, and owners tend to negotiate more seriously with productions that clearly know the market. For crews weighing a full production partner against handling logistics solo, resources like Image Studio’s production workflow guide and PHENYX’s pre-production checklist both lay out what to lock down before a location contract gets signed.

Bringing a Location Vision to Life

Image Studio has spent over 14 years turning location scouting into finished cinematic work, from campaign films for brands like National Geographic to music videos built around a single striking backdrop. That experience is what separates a beautiful location photo from a video that actually gets finished on schedule and on budget. If you are planning a shoot and want a production partner who handles location logistics end to end, Image Studio’s team coordinates permits, local suppliers, and contingency planning as part of the production itself, not as an afterthought bolted on later.

Sources for Further Location Research

• Wikipedia’s category index of music videos organized by filming location
• OS Maps’ UK guide to visitable music-video filming locations and routes
• Thrillist’s roundup of famous music video filming locations worldwide

What the Location Debate Gets Wrong

Most advice on music video locations treats the search itself as the hard part, find a beautiful backdrop, and the video follows. That is backward. The real skill is deciding what a location has to do for the song before you ever open a location marketplace. Studland Bay works for “Yellow” because a wide, empty beach matches a song about vastness and simplicity. Put that same concept on a crowded urban street and the emotional logic collapses, no matter how good the light is.

The other overrated idea is that heritage and remote locations are simply “worth the hassle” if the shot is good enough. Sometimes they are not. A UNESCO site with a six-week permit runway can sink a video with a real release date attached to it. Readers should prioritize matching location type to story first, then test a shortlist against realistic lead times, not the other way around. The location that photographs best on a scouting trip is not always the one that gets you to a finished video on time.

– Image Studio

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