A TV production risk assessment should include eight core sections
Use this as a production risk assessment checklist before your next shoot:
- Team and personnel: who is on the shoot, their roles, and their experience level relevant to the environment and activities involved
- Medical: location-specific health risks, first aid capability on location, distance from medical facilities, and the evacuation plan
- Environment: terrain, weather, wildlife, altitude and natural hazards specific to the filming location
- Security: local crime, civil unrest, checkpoint risks, and any location-specific security considerations
- Activities: the specific hazards associated with each planned activity, assessed individually
- Transport and accommodation: vehicle safety, route risks, accommodation hazards and logistics
- Legal: permits, filming authorisations and local laws relevant to the shoot
- Emergency planning: who is responsible for what if something goes wrong, communications protocols, evacuation routes and emergency contacts
The level of detail in each section should reflect the specific conditions of the shoot. The risk assessments for a studio interview and a remote location are entirely different documents, even if they follow the same structure.
For a full guide to each section – what to look for, where productions commonly go wrong, and how to approach the process – read our risk assessment for filming guide →
About each section
Team and personnel
Who is on the shoot matters as much as what they are doing. This section should capture the number and roles of everyone on location, their experience level relevant to the environment and the specific activities involved, any specialists contracted to manage particular risks, and any local support; fixers, translators, local crew, and the basis on which they were selected.
Experience is often underweighted. Two crews with identical professional credits can present very different risk profiles depending on their relevant experience for this specific shoot. A crew new to a particular environment – jungle, Arctic, mountain – will need more explicit control measures around briefing, buddying and supervision than one with direct experience of those conditions.
Medical
The medical section should address the specific health risks associated with the location and activities. For international shoots this means location-specific diseases, vaccination requirements, altitude sickness where relevant, and environmental health risks. For any shoot it means: what first aid capability is on location, how far the nearest medical facility is, and what the evacuation plan looks like if someone needs urgent care.
The level of medical provision needs to match the remoteness and risk profile of the shoot. Sensitive personal medical information about cast and crew should not be included in the risk assessment itself, pre-existing conditions are managed separately through a medical declaration process, with relevant control measures added to the document later with the individual’s consent.
Useful resources for this section include TravelHealthPro for disease risks and health recommendations by country.
Environment
This section needs to be specific; not just the country, but the region, the terrain, the environment type, and the specific locations within each shoot day. Weather, wildlife, terrain, access and altitude all vary significantly even within a small geographic area.
For remote or challenging environments this section needs particular depth. A generic “cold weather” entry does not adequately serve a shoot in Antarctica or Arctic Greenland. The specific conditions your crew will be living and working in need to be addressed explicitly.
Security
Often the most underwritten section of a standard production risk assessment. Local crime, civil unrest, checkpoint risks, territorial control, cyber-risk, these vary significantly by location and require specific rather than generic treatment.
For international shoots, the FCDO travel advisory for the country provides a useful baseline. For higher-risk locations, conflict-affected regions or areas with complex security situations, a standalone security assessment is typically needed alongside the standard production risk assessment.
Activities
The specific activities planned on the shoot drive most of the location-specific risks. Each activity has its own hazard profile that needs to be assessed individually. Rope access work above an urban skyline carries different risks to wilderness rigging in a remote mountain environment, even if both involve working at height. Working with animals, cave diving, white water operations, stunt work, each needs its own entry, not a single line covering “production activities.”
For UK-based activities, HSE guidance provides relevant frameworks. For specialist activities (e.g. diving, rope access) expert advice should be sought on the specific risks.
Transport and accommodation
Often the highest-frequency risk category on a production and the most consistently underestimated. Air and ground transport hazards, vehicle condition and driver competence, road quality, border crossings, and accommodation safety all need to be assessed specifically.
For remote shoots, transport and logistics become a critical risk category in their own right. Identify single points of failure; one vehicle, one route, one local contact, and make sure there is a plan if they fail.
Legal
Permits, authorisations, filming restrictions and local laws. Getting this wrong doesn’t just create a legal problem, it can bring a shoot to a halt. This section is particularly important for international productions and for shoots involving specialist activities that require specific permissions.
Emergency planning
What happens if something goes wrong? This section should outline the emergency response plan for the shoot; who is responsible for what, how the team communicates in an emergency, what the evacuation routes and procedures are, and who the emergency contacts are. This section is consistently the thinnest in practice. It should not be.
Where Secret Compass fits
For productions that want expert support building a thorough risk assessment, Secret Compass works with production teams from the recce stage; first-look workshops, full risk assessments tailored to the specific shoot, and safety plans and protocols. Our team has delivered risk management across 111 countries for Netflix, BBC, National Geographic and Disney+.
For productions that need a structured first draft quickly, Secret Compass AI generates a tailored document covering all eight sections above based on the specific details of your shoot. It is built for day-to-day production workflows where the bottleneck is time rather than specialist expertise. For complex, remote or hostile environment productions, our consultancy team is the right answer.
Resources
- FCDO travel advisories — country-specific safety and security information
- TravelHealthPro — disease risks and health recommendations by country
- HSE — guidance for UK-based activities and employer responsibilities
- ISO 31000 — international risk management framework
- BS 8848 — UK standard for overseas expeditions and adventurous activities