Made Here
Aberdeenshire has attracted large and small films, TV and fashion shoots for decades.
coastal Charm
Film buffs the world over, and especially in Scotland, hold Local Hero (1983) in great affection. Filmed in Pennan, a one street fishing village on the north coast of Aberdeenshire, the location and the story of the community has won hearts worldwide. The telephone box made famous in the film is still there.
Along the coast, seventeenth century harbour, Portsoy, with its unmodernised heritage buildings has attracted films that tell an island story: the 2016 making of Whisky Galore and more recently, Peaky Blinders (BBC) in 2020. Portsoy stood in for the French outpost of Miquelon, off Newfoundland, producing the famously foggy scenes of mid-Atlantic treachery. The ancient granite warehouse next to the harbour set the scene beautifully.
TV shows regularly come to the Aberdeenshire coast, most recently Landscape Artist of the Year 2024, (Sky Arts), and the BBC came to do a charming treatment of Villages by the sea: Johnshaven recently.
New Energy Stories
Brand Scotland shot this short film at Balmedie beach on the east coast not far north of Aberdeen. Shot in the January dawn light of the North Sea, it draws the viewer into the natural landscape of sand dunes and long coastal vistas, at the same time highlighting climate mitigation projects that abound in the region. The vast offshore wind turbines off the coast north of Aberdeen are one of many renewable, biodiversity and sustainability projects that attract factual and non-factual film makers to the region.,
Castles and estates
Blessed with an abundance of castles and stately homes, Aberdeenshire continues to attract creatives inspired by the drama and light of ruins or finely maintained castles. Dunottar Castle has seen Franco Zeffirelli film Hamlet (1990), and Victor Frankenstein (2015) saw Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy in the shire. As a royal county, several castles have stood in for Balmoral, such as Cluny Castle and Castle Fraser in the 2006 film The Queen, starring Helen Mirren. Slains (an inspiration for Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula) and featured in the first series of The Crown (Netflix, 2015), alongside Macduff and Cruden Bay. Eugene Levy recently came to Candacraig House in Strathdon with Apple TV+.
Natural Beauty
One of our favourites is Grand Tours of Scotland’s Rivers (BBC), who came to film on the River Ythan,
The slightly more famous, River Don: Quietly flows the Don, and of course the royal drama that is the River Dee.
History and nature collide at Poldullie Bridge in the Cairngorms over the Don at Bellabeg. A famous spot in Jacobite history, it was used instead for Mary, Queen of Scots (2018). Deeper into The Cairngorms, Mar Lodge, one of the coldest parts of the UK, hosted Winterwatch (BBC, 2015-16) over two years and even featured in Batman – Dark Knight Rises (2012).
