Town guide

Filming in Newton, New Jersey

A production guide to Newton’s filming law, Chapter 105 of the Town Code, adopted in September 2025. The ordinance repealed the town’s original 1970 filming chapter outright and replaced it with a modern one, right down to a definition of major motion picture that names A24, Netflix Studios and Amazon MGM Studios.

Newton is a Film Ready certified locality and the Sussex County seat. The fees are not in the filming chapter at all: they sit in Chapter 100, and every figure there is a ceiling rather than a price.

Everything below is read from the enacted text of Chapter 105 and of § 100-8. Where the chapter is silent, most notably on filming hours, we say so rather than borrowing a rule from a neighbouring town.

Information checked August 26, 2026

Checked Aug 26 2026

County: Sussex County
Film Ready status: Film Ready certified locality. Newton appears on the NJ Motion Picture & Television Commission’s current certified-localities list, checked August 26, 2026. Certification does not guarantee approval, property access or location availability
Controlling ordinance: Town Code Chapter 105 “Filming”, § 105-1 to § 105-11, adopted September 10, 2025 by Ordinance No. 2025-18, which repealed the town’s original 1970 filming ordinance outright
Where the fees live: Chapter 100 § 100-8, not Chapter 105. § 105-10 simply points there
Municipal starting point: Office of the Municipal Clerk
Municipal Clerk: Teresa A. Oswin, RMC/CMR, Municipal Clerk, Deputy Town Manager and Deputy Registrar · 973-383-3521 ext. 232
Clerk’s Office: 39 Trinity Street, Newton, NJ 07860 · 973-383-3521 ext. 221 · fax 973-300-1208 · Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Town Manager: Thomas S. Russo, Jr. · 973-383-3521 ext. 224. The Town Manager, not the Clerk, refuses permits, grants waivers and receives appeals
Application: A form approved by the Municipal Clerk, applied for and obtained from that office during normal business hours. No downloadable form is published
Standard lead time: At least four or more business days before the requested shooting date. The Town Manager may waive the four-day period
Fee schedule status: Every figure is a ceiling, not a price. The § 100-8 table is headed “Fee (not to exceed)”
Basic permit, 4+ days notice: Not to exceed $100, one time
Expedited permit, 3 or fewer days notice: Not to exceed $250, one time
Nonprofit and student films: Not to exceed $25, one time, no daily rate required
Daily filming on public property: Not to exceed $150 for a film or television project budgeted under $20 million; not to exceed $500 for one budgeted over $20 million
Daily filming on private property: No fee charged by the municipality
Street closure: Not to exceed $1,000 per day, under the inconvenience-fee line for a municipality of fewer than 10,000 residents
Police and fire: The municipality’s standard hourly rates for police and fire, under an agreed public safety plan. The rates are not stated in the Code
Parking: The same rates charged to the public. There is no separate production parking rate
Dressed businesses and background properties: Negotiated directly between the production company and the private business or residence. The Town does not set or collect these
Major motion picture threshold: A budget of at least $20,000,000, or recurrent weekly television series programming, or financing or distribution by a listed studio. The list names A24, Netflix Studios, Amazon MGM Studios, Peacock, HBO, Hulu and Skydance
Public-lands insurance: Bodily injury $500,000 any one person and $1,000,000 aggregate per occurrence; property damage $300,000 aggregate per occurrence
Off-duty police: Conditional, not automatic. Required only if the Chief of Police requires it, under the agreed public safety plan
Filming hours: Not stated. Chapter 105 contains no hours provision. That is an absence in the ordinance, not permission to film at any hour
Neighbour notice: Written notice at least three days before the requested shooting date to affected businesses, merchants or residents, who may file objections that become part of your application
Appeals: To the Town Council, filed with the Town Manager within 10 days, hearing within 30 days. If the Council does not act in time the Manager’s decision is deemed reversed
Penalties: Fine up to $2,000, up to 90 days in jail, or up to 90 days of community service, or any combination. Each day is a separate violation
Last verified: August 26, 2026

Newton threw out its 1970 filming ordinance and started again

Most New Jersey municipal filming chapters are amendments layered on older text. Newton did something different. Ordinance No. 2025-18, adopted September 10, 2025, repealed the former Chapter 105 outright, together with everything built on top of it: the original chapter adopted June 8, 1970 as Section 6-15 of the Revised General Ordinances, and its amendments of 2007, 2012, February 2025 and May 2025.

What replaced it is a clean chapter written for the current market, and you can see that most clearly in one definition.

Section 105-1

Newton’s definition of “major motion picture” is the most current corporate list in any New Jersey filming ordinance we have read.

Section 105-1 names NBCUniversal, including Peacock; Warner Bros. Discovery, including New Line Cinema, HBO, DC Studios and Castle Rock Entertainment; Paramount Pictures, including Miramax, MTV Films, Showtime, Skydance, Dreamworks and Nickelodeon Movies; Walt Disney Studios, including 20th Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures, Hulu and Marvel Studios; Sony Pictures, including Columbia, Screen Gems and TriStar; Amazon MGM Studios; Netflix Studios; and A24.

It then adds any film budgeted at $20,000,000 or more and any recurrent weekly television series programming.

For comparison, most of the neighbouring chapters still list “20th Century Fox, including Fox Searchlight” and “Dreamworks” as separate top-level studios, which stopped describing the industry some years ago. If you are financed by A24 or by a streamer, you are a major motion picture in Newton regardless of budget.

The definition of filming was modernised too. It covers still or motion pictures intended for viewing on television, in theatres, on a major linear broadcast network or streaming platforms, or for institutional uses. News stories filmed within the municipality are expressly outside the chapter.

How to begin

Filming in Newton runs through the office of the Municipal Clerk, but the decisions belong to the Town Manager. Newton has a council-manager government, and Chapter 105 puts the Manager at every discretionary point: refusing a permit under § 105-5, waiving the filing period under § 105-3A, waiving any other requirement under § 105-7, and receiving a notice of appeal under § 105-6.

Teresa A. Oswin, RMC/CMR, Municipal Clerk, Deputy Town Manager and Deputy Registrar · 973-383-3521 ext. 232
Municipal Clerk’s Office, 39 Trinity Street, Newton, NJ 07860 · 973-383-3521 ext. 221 · fax 973-300-1208
Thomas S. Russo, Jr., Town Manager · 973-383-3521 ext. 224
Public hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

One thing worth knowing before an appeal. The Town’s own staff directory lists Teresa A. Oswin as Municipal Clerk and Deputy Town Manager. Section 105-6 requires a notice of appeal from a Town Manager decision to be filed with the Town Manager. If you ever need that route, ask who will handle it.

Filing. Section 105-3A: no permit will be issued unless applied for at least four or more business days prior to the requested shooting date. The Town Manager may waive the four-day period where, in his judgment, the applicant has obtained all related approvals and adjacent property owners or tenants do not need to be notified.

What triggers a permit. Section 105-2A reaches filming on public property and filming on private property where the filming involves the use of public property for the operation, placement or temporary storage of vehicles or equipment, including any temporary structure, barricade or device intended to restrict or block off pedestrian or vehicular traffic. The test is whether anything you are doing occupies public property, not where the camera stands.

The permit sets out the approved location and duration by specific reference to day or dates, and must be readily available for inspection by Town officials at all times at the filming site.

If the weather turns, § 105-2C lets the Municipal Clerk issue a new permit for other dates at your request, subject to full compliance with everything else, and no additional fee is paid.

Fees, which are not in the filming chapter

Chapter 105 contains no fee figures at all. Section 105-10 says only that the schedule of fees is set out in § 100-8, inside Chapter 100 “Fees and Costs”. That section was amended twice in 2025, in May by Ordinance 2025-12 and again in September by Ordinance 2025-18 alongside the new filming chapter.

Read the column heading first

Section 100-8 is a table of ceilings. Its column heading reads “Fee (not to exceed)”, so every amount below is the maximum the Town may charge, not a posted price. Ask the Clerk what will actually be charged for your application and get it in writing.

Category	Fee (not to exceed)
Basic filming permit, one time, with four or more days advance notice of the first day of filming	$100
Expedited basic filming permit, one time, with three or fewer days advance notice of the first day of filming	$250
Basic filming permit for nonprofits, including student films, one time, no daily rate required	$25
Daily filming on public property, film and television projects with a budget under $20 million	$150
Daily filming on public property, film and television projects with a budget over $20 million	$500
Daily filming on private property	No fee charged by the municipality
Hiring of off-duty police and fire inspections, under the agreed public safety plan	The municipality’s standard hourly rates for police and fire
Street closures, municipality of fewer than 10,000 residents	$1,000 per day
Properties in the background of, or used in, a shot	Negotiated between the production company and the private business or residence
Daily prep of a business being “dressed”	Negotiated between the production company and the private business
Daily filming of a business that is “dressed”	Negotiated between the production company and the private business
Parking	The same rates that are charged to the public

Two things to notice about the notice bands

First, they are tighter than Garwood’s. Garwood uses the same model table but sets the basic band at five or more days and the expedited band at four or fewer. Newton sets them at four or more and three or fewer. Four days advance notice is the ordinary fee in Newton and the expedited fee in Garwood.

Second, the units do not match inside Newton’s own code. Section 105-3A sets the filing floor in business days. Section 100-8 sets the fee bands in plain days. Four business days across a weekend is six calendar days. We are not going to reconcile those for you. Ask the Clerk which count governs your fee.

The street-closure line dominates a street-work budget. At up to $1,000 per day it is more than six times the daily filming fee for a sub-$20 million project. If the day can be built around lane control rather than a closure, that decision is worth real money.

Section 105-9 sits on top of every fee. In addition to any other fees or costs, you reimburse the Town for any lost revenue such as parking meter revenue, repairs to public property, or other revenue the Town was prevented from earning because of filming.

Insurance, police and inspections

Insurance. Section 105-3B(1) requires, before any permit issues for filming on public lands, satisfactory proof of coverage for:

Bodily injury: $500,000 to any one person, and $1,000,000 in the aggregate for any occurrence
Property damage: $300,000 in the aggregate for each occurrence

Section 105-3B(2) adds a written agreement to indemnify and save harmless the municipality from any and all liability, expense, claim or damages resulting from the use of public lands. There is no bond or cash deposit in this chapter.

Section 105-3B(3)

The off-duty officer is conditional in Newton.

Section 105-3B(3) requires “the hiring of an off-duty police officer, if required by the Chief of Police, according to the agreed-upon public safety plan, for the times indicated on the permit”.

That is the same conditional structure Garwood uses, and the opposite of Roseland, Florence Township and Pompton Lakes, where an officer is a flat precondition of any public-lands permit.

Your public safety plan is therefore the document that decides your police line. Bring a real one to the first conversation: crew and vehicle counts, where the trucks sit, sidewalk and traffic impact, and any firearms, effects or stunts.

The Town still reserves a separate right. Section 105-5B allows the Town to require one or more on-site patrolmen where the production may impede the proper flow of traffic, at your cost as a cost of production. Where existing electrical power lines will be used, an on-site licensed electrician may be required if the production company does not have one on staff.

The rates are not in the Code. Section 100-8 says only “the municipality’s standard hourly rates for police and fire”. Ask the Clerk for the current schedule. Do not read the absence of a printed number as an indication that police attendance or a fire inspection is free.

Copies of the approved permit go to the Police and Fire Departments before filming and to the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission at njfilm@njeda.gov, an address the ordinance itself supplies. You must permit the Fire Prevention Bureau or other Town inspectors to inspect the site and the equipment where deemed necessary, and comply with all safety instructions issued.

Hours are not in this chapter

What the ordinance does not say

Chapter 105 contains no filming-hours provision.

There is no residential window, no wrap time, no weekend rule and no night-scene clause anywhere in the eleven sections. The subject is not addressed.

That is an absence in the ordinance. It is not permission to film at any hour. Section 105-4A still requires the permit holder to conduct filming so as to minimise inconvenience or discomfort to adjoining property owners and, to the extent practicable, to abate noise and park vehicles off the public streets, and the Police Department reports on every application under § 105-5A.

Put your hours in the application. Section 105-7 gives the Town Manager power to waive any requirement, provision or restriction of the chapter, and one of the six listed factors is expressly “the nature of the filming, including whether filming will take place indoors or outdoors, and the proposed hours for filming”. Hours are clearly something the Manager expects to weigh, even though the chapter sets none.

The other five factors are potential traffic congestion at the location; your ability to remove your vehicles and equipment from public streets or other public property; the extent to which you are requesting restrictions on public streets or public parking facilities; the extent to which the filming may affect adjoining and nearby property owners and occupants; and the Town’s prior experience with you, if any.

We will not publish hours borrowed from a neighbouring town’s ordinance. Several nearby New Jersey chapters run 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. in residential zones, but none of them is law in Newton.

Notice, refusal and appeals

Neighbour notice. Where the production will directly involve or affect any businesses, merchants or residents, § 105-4B requires written notice at least three days before the requested shooting date, telling them that objections may be filed with the Municipal Clerk. Those objections form part of your application and are considered in reviewing it.

The proof-of-service deadline is ambiguous in the enacted text. Section 105-4B requires proof of service to be submitted to the Clerk “within two days of the requested shooting date” without saying before or after. The identical wording appears in Gloucester Township, Florence Township, Pompton Lakes and Garwood. Filing early is the safe reading either way.

Refusal. Under § 105-5A the Town Manager may refuse a permit on the basis of objective facts, after reviewing the application and a report from the Police Department and other Town agencies involved with the proposed site, where filming at that location or time would violate any law or ordinance, unreasonably interfere with the use and enjoyment of adjoining properties, unreasonably impede the free flow of vehicular or pedestrian traffic, or otherwise endanger public health, safety or welfare.

The appeal, and the deemed-reversal clause

Section 105-6 sends an appeal to the Town Council. Written notice of appeal is filed with the Town Manager within 10 days of the Manager’s decision, and the Council sets a hearing within 30 days. The Council decides by resolution at its first regularly scheduled public meeting after the hearing, unless you agree in writing to a later date.

Section 105-6B then provides that if such a resolution is not adopted within the time required, the decision of the Town Manager shall be deemed to be reversed, and a permit shall be issued in conformity with the application, or the relief shall be deemed denied.

The same default appears in Garwood and Clark. It is a genuine protection against municipal inaction, but 30 days plus a council cycle is longer than most shooting schedules. Resolve problems at the application stage.

Penalties. A fine not exceeding $2,000, imprisonment in the county or municipal jail for up to 90 days, or a period of community service up to 90 days, or any combination, as the Municipal Court Judge determines. Each day a violation exists is a separate and distinct violation.

What we are not publishing for Newton

Stated plainly rather than guessed at:

Filming hours. Chapter 105 sets none, and we are not importing them from another municipality.
The standard hourly rates for police and fire. Section 100-8 points to them without stating them.
Any fee as a fixed price. Every figure in § 100-8 is capped, not posted.
Whether the fee bands are counted in business days or calendar days. Section 105-3A says business days and § 100-8 says days. We report both.
A downloadable application. None is published. Section 105-2B says the form is one approved by the Municipal Clerk.
A named Film Ready Liaison or Film Permit Representative. No official source names one.
Any location or its availability. Nothing on this page asserts that a Town street, square, park, building or private property is available to film.

Chapter 105 reaches land within the Town’s jurisdiction and control. Sussex County roads and parks, State highways, and privately held land each have their own controlling authority, and a Town permit does not reach them. Newton is the Sussex County seat, so county-owned property in the town centre is a live consideration rather than a theoretical one.

Common questions

How much does a film permit cost in Newton, NJ?

The fees are in section 100-8 of the Town Code rather than in the filming chapter, and every figure is a ceiling: the column is headed "Fee (not to exceed)". The basic permit is capped at $100 with four or more days advance notice, or $250 expedited with three or fewer days. Nonprofit and student films are capped at $25. Daily filming on public property is capped at $150 for projects budgeted under $20 million and $500 for those over $20 million. Filming on private property carries no municipal fee, and a street closure is capped at $1,000 per day.

How far in advance do I need a film permit in Newton?

At least four or more business days before the requested shooting date, under section 105-3A. The Town Manager may waive that period where all related approvals are in hand and adjacent owners or tenants do not need notice. Note a mismatch inside the Code: section 105-3A counts business days while the section 100-8 fee bands count plain days, so confirm with the Clerk which count decides your fee.

What counts as a major motion picture in Newton?

Section 105-1 names NBCUniversal including Peacock, Warner Bros. Discovery including New Line Cinema, HBO, DC Studios and Castle Rock, Paramount Pictures including Miramax, MTV Films, Showtime, Skydance, Dreamworks and Nickelodeon Movies, Walt Disney Studios including 20th Century Studios, Searchlight, Hulu and Marvel, Sony Pictures including Columbia, Screen Gems and TriStar, Amazon MGM Studios, Netflix Studios and A24. It also covers any film budgeted at $20,000,000 or more and any recurrent weekly television series programming. It is the most current studio list in any New Jersey municipal filming ordinance we have read.

What are the filming hours in Newton?

Chapter 105 does not state any. There is no residential window, no wrap time and no night-scene provision anywhere in the chapter. That is an absence in the ordinance rather than permission to film at any hour: section 105-4A still requires the permit holder to minimise inconvenience to adjoining owners and abate noise where practicable. Put your proposed hours in the application, since section 105-7 makes proposed hours one of the factors the Town Manager weighs.

Do I need to hire a police officer to film in Newton?

Only if the Chief of Police requires it. Section 105-3B(3) conditions the hiring of an off-duty officer on the Chief's requirement under an agreed public safety plan, which is different from Roseland, Florence Township and Pompton Lakes, where an officer is a flat precondition of any public-lands permit. The Town separately reserves the right under section 105-5B to require on-site patrolmen where the production may impede traffic. Rates are the municipality's standard hourly rates and are not published in the Code.

Who decides film permit applications in Newton?

The Municipal Clerk receives the application and issues the permit, but the Town Manager makes the decisions: refusing a permit under section 105-5, waiving the filing period under section 105-3A, waiving any other requirement under section 105-7, and receiving a notice of appeal under section 105-6. An appeal goes to the Town Council, which must act within its own deadline or the Manager's decision is deemed reversed.

Official sources

Checked August 26, 2026 against Chapter 105 and § 100-8 of the Town of Newton Code, both read in full through the eCode print view under code root NE2921, the Town’s staff directory pages for the Municipal Clerk and Town Manager, and the State certified-localities list. No prior research existed for Newton in this project; this is a first full pass on the primary sources Report a correction or updated permit requirement.

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Reviewed by Sam Moskowitz, producer & director of photography

This guide is researched and reviewed by Sam Moskowitz, a New Jersey-based producer and DP who runs BLL Films. Sam’s production and cinematography credits include work for Netflix, History Channel, Hulu, the NFL and Google. Every changing fact on this page carries a verification date; see how this site is researched for the full process.

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