On location: six of the best film commissions

The Bath Film Office: opened last June with 800 locations on its books and is spending all its time getting known within the industry. Mark Ezra's feature dbut, Savage Hearts, was shot there and, their brochure says, "took advantage of Bath as an underused contemporary location".

Central England Screen Commission: the recent straight-to-video release Doomsday Gun, with Frank Langella, was shot with the help of the CESC, the locations split between Spain and the West Midlands. Most of its work has been for TV dramas such as the BBC's All Quiet on the Preston Front, Loose Talk and The Choir.

Eastern Screen: covers eight counties in eastern England, and is adept at disguise (that wasn't really Malibu in the Jane Fonda movie Julia, it was Winterton beach near Great Yarmouth). Recent projects have included Scarlett (the sequel to Gone with the Wind), Princess Caraboo and Four Weddings and a Funeral (spot the Dartford bridge in the background).

Yorkshire Screen Commission: one of the busiest, largely due to its reputation as "Herriot Country". But it has also hosted shoots of The Secret Garden, Wuthering Heights, starring Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes, and the BBC dramas Seaforth and Blood and Peaches. Most recently, parts of the new Emma Thompson/Jonathan Pryce film Carrington were shot here.

Edinburgh and Lothian Screen Industries Office: established in 1990, the SIO offers everything from location research to clearing up services after shooting. Recent successes shot with its co-operation include Shallow Grave and Stephen Frears' forthcoming Jekyll & Hyde movie, Mary Reilly, with Julia Roberts and John Malkovich.

Screen Wales: last summer was a bumper season for Screen Wales. It played host to five big productions filming on location: Restoration, with Meg Ryan and Robert Downey Jnr; The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain, with Hugh Grant; August, Anthony Hopkins's directorial dbut; Feast of July, a production by Peregrine Films for Merchant and Ivory; and David Zucker's tale of derring-do, First Knight, with Richard Gere, Sean Connery and Julia Ormond.