Dearborn Heights, MI Filming & Production: Student Filming (2026)

City Code Chapter 8, Article III governs all filming and photography activity in the City of Dearborn Heights, defining production activity as any staging, shooting, taping, or recording of a motion picture, commercial, or television show, and stationary photographic activity as photography using equipment set up in one spot for more than five consecutive minutes in a public right-of-way, on unenclosed private property visible to the public, or on public property under Section 8-41. Section 8-42(a) makes it unlawful to engage in either activity without first obtaining a production license from the city clerk.

Section 8-42(c) lists five categories exempt from the license requirement, including news gathering, city-directed activity, work inside a legally established studio, and, at subsection (c)(5), any recording, taping, filming, or photographing engaged strictly for non-commercial purposes tied to a political, religious, community, cultural, wedding, educational, or sporting event or celebration. A student shooting a class project, yearbook footage, or a school event falls under this educational-purpose carve-out and does not need to apply through the city clerk's office or pay the license processing fee set under Section 8-44.

Any commercial filming outside these exemptions, even by a student working on a paid production, still requires the full application under Section 8-43, referral review by the police, fire, building and engineering, public works, water, and treasurer's departments under Section 8-45, and compliance with the mandatory conditions of Section 8-47 covering notice, access, cleanup, and insurance.