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Reserve parking for your film production

Request parking for your production vehicles, picture vehicles, or to clear for picture.

Film SF | San Francisco Film Commission

What to know

Cost

Production vehicle parking is included in your daily use fee, unless you use Port property. See fees to film in SF. Parking at the Port is separate.

Eligibility

Parking requests are for production vehicles only. These requests do not include parking for cast and crew personal vehicles.

What to do

1. Check where you plan to park

We recommend physically checking the space that you plan to use for parking. 

If you want to park in a business’s white zone, you must get permission from the business owner. 

Restrictions

Motorhomes with pop-outs cannot be used on city streets.

We do not permit parking requests for cast and crew personal vehicles.

Our permit does not override:

  • Street sweeping schedules
  • Commuter-restricted lanes
  • Bus lanes 
  • “No Stopping for Thru Traffic” (red) zones
  • Parklet locations
  • Driveways

If you park or shoot in an area permitted for street artist vendors, you may be fined $200 a day per artist for interrupting their business.

2. Indicate proposed parking locations on your permit application

Mark the box for “Parking Request” on your application location pages.

Include a diagram of your requested parking locations

The diagram should contain:

  • A map view of the street and surrounding streets (you can use a screenshot from Google Maps or something similar)
  • A directional indicator for North
  • An “X” or highlighted area where you want to park indicating the number of spaces requested
  • Address ranges for each block/street (e.g. 1000-1098 California St)
  • The production name
  • A contact number from the production, to be displayed on the “No stopping” postings
  • Date and times of when you want to park (e.g. Tuesday, May 5 2026, 7AM-10PM). Verify that there are no white zones or other parking restrictions in the area (you can conduct a google street view if needed) and that your production vehicles fit in the requested spaces.

Sample filming parking diagram

3. Hire an approved vendor to post your parking signs

Productions who are not approved to self post must hire a City-approved posting vendor to post their no parking signs. Posting vendors are small businesses that work with productions on their parking needs. Film SF processes and approves parking requests, and productions hire posting vendors directly to print, post, and remove their parking signs. Film SF coordinates the distribution of approved parking maps to posting vendors. Once the posting vendor is confirmed, we will send you the approved maps, and posting number directly to the posting vendor and production contact.

Interested in becoming a posting vendor or getting approved to self post? Please fill out and send this interest form to film@sfgov.org.

Current approved vendors:

Special cases

Using of 8 or more parking spaces

You must notify the neighborhood 72 hours before shooting, if you want to use 8 or more parking spaces.

Traffic control on Muni lines

If your filming area will impact Muni service on the street, an SFMTA inspector will be needed to do traffic control.

We can work with you to see if you need this.

Parking in residential neighborhoods

For certain areas and large productions with extended parking periods, we encourage productions to proactively explore alternative parking options whenever possible to help minimize impacts on residents.

Parking on Port property

The Port will determine the parking fee. It is about $25 per day per stall or parking meter. There will also be an additional administrative fee if Port staff  have to post the “no parking” signs.

You must pay your Port parking fees separately and in person. Film SF will verify payment before issuing the film permit.

Using your reserved parking

Street parking for film shoots must be posted 24 to 72 hours prior to the posting going into effect.

Display placards in the dashboards of your production vehicles with the production name and posting number.

If there is a vehicle in your reserved space, do your best to locate the vehicle’s owner.  If you have SFPD officers working on your production, they can help. We discourage towing.

We must approve any changes to the parking request.

Contact us

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