Town guide

Filming in Ringwood, New Jersey

Ringwood is certified Film Ready and publishes no Borough filming ordinance, application or fee anywhere we could find.

The critical thing to understand here is jurisdictional: Ringwood State Park is State property, not Borough property, and filming there needs a permit from the NJDEP that the Borough cannot give you.

Ringwood is one of the most visually distinctive municipalities in northern New Jersey, and most of what makes it so is inside a State park. That single fact governs everything on this page: a Film Ready designation for the Borough says nothing about access to the park, and the two are administered by different authorities under different instruments.

Information checked September 22, 2026

Checked Sep 22 2026

County: Passaic County
Film Ready status: Film Ready certified locality. Confirmed on the State’s published certified-localities list, read in full September 22, 2026.
Published filming ordinance: None found as of September 22, 2026
Who to contact: The clerk’s office
NJDEP client-photography policy: A separate, third instrument. Not a substitute for a commercial motion-picture permit
Ringwood State Park is not the Borough: The park is State property. Commercial filming there needs a Special Use Permit from NJDEP, which the Borough cannot grant. A Borough Film Ready designation implies no park access
Permit fee: Not published. Ask the clerk’s office
Lead time: Not published. Ask the clerk’s office
Insurance: Not published. Ask the clerk’s office
What this page is not: It is not a finding that filming is unregulated here. Street closures, parking, noise and police staffing are governed by other chapters, and the municipality is certified, which implies a process exists
Date of this finding: September 22, 2026

Read this first

An absent ordinance is not permission. We could not find a published filming ordinance. That is a statement about what is published, not a statement that you may film without asking.

Street closures, parking, noise, obstruction of the sidewalk and police staffing are regulated in every New Jersey municipality, filming chapter or not. And this municipality is State-certified as Film Ready, which means the Commission was satisfied there is a process. Call the clerk.

What we found, and did not find

Exactly where we looked in Ringwood, and on what date

We publish the search rather than just the conclusion, so you can judge it and so we can be corrected.

Where we looked	What we found
eCode360 RI4114, the codified Borough code	No Filming chapter
eCode360’s New Laws register	No entries
The Law Ledger	No entries
The Borough website	No filming ordinance, resolution, code of conduct, application, liaison, fee, lead time, hours, notice, insurance, bond or appeal route
The State certified-localities list, read in full	Ringwood is certified

Note that what is missing here is a Borough process. The State park process is separate, published, and explained below.

Certified, and still nothing online

How a town can be certified and still have no ordinance online

Film Ready certification is a determination by the New Jersey Motion Picture & Television Commission, made on material a municipality submits to it: a designated liaison, a permit process, and an inventory of locations. It is not a publication requirement.

So nothing obliges a municipality to put the resulting ordinance on its own website, or to file it with a commercial code host like eCode360 or Municode. Small clerk’s offices in particular sometimes adopt an ordinance, file the signed copy, and never get it codified. The document exists; it simply is not on the internet.

Which means the most likely explanation here is a publication gap rather than an absence of process — and that the clerk’s office can almost certainly hand you the document over the counter or by email.

Ringwood State Park is not the Borough

Jurisdiction, before anything else

Ringwood State Park is State property. Commercial photography and filming there require a Special Use Permit from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, not a Borough permit. The Borough cannot grant access to it and a Film Ready designation for the Borough does not imply any.

NJDEP also publishes a separate paid client-photography policy for Ringwood. That is a third instrument again, and it is not a substitute for a commercial motion-picture permit.

Why this trips people up

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live filmed at Ringwood State Park, and a 2024 State release supports that. Municipality-level records of other productions exist too.

Read quickly, those look like evidence of a Borough filming process. They are evidence of a State park filming process. The location is in Ringwood; the permit was not the Borough’s to issue.

So there are potentially two conversations for a Ringwood shoot, and they are with different authorities: NJDEP for anything inside the State park, and the Borough Clerk for anything on Borough streets and property. Work out which applies to each of your locations before you apply for either.

What to ask when you call

Five questions, in this order. They are the same five that the published ordinances elsewhere on this site answer, and asking them in one call is faster than discovering them one at a time.

Is there an adopted filming ordinance, and can I have a copy? Ask for the ordinance number and the adoption date. If it exists, that is your governing document and everything else follows from it.
What does a permit cost, and is there a daily fee? Get both figures. A basic fee with an unmentioned daily rate on top is the most common budgeting surprise in this State.
How far ahead do you need the application? And separately: how long does approval actually take. Those are different questions and the answers often differ by a week or more.
What insurance limits, and who is the named insured? Get the exact wording, because your broker needs it verbatim rather than paraphrased.
Do I need an off-duty police officer, and how do I book one? This is usually the longest-lead item on any small-town shoot.

Ask for the answers by email. A written answer from the clerk’s office is worth more on a shoot day than a clear memory of a phone call.

If the clerk does not answer

If the clerk’s office does not answer, OPRA will

New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act gives you a statutory response clock, and it works perfectly well for this. A request that names the four documents is usually enough:

“Under the Open Public Records Act, I request: (1) the ordinance, resolution or adopted code of conduct governing commercial filming, including its number and adoption date; (2) the current film permit application; (3) the current schedule of film permit fees and municipal service charges; (4) the name and title of the designated Film Ready liaison. If any item does not exist, please state that in writing.”

That last sentence is the one that matters. A written “no such record exists” is itself a sourced, dated fact you can rely on and build a schedule around, which is a great deal more than an absence somebody observed on a website.

If we have this wrong, we want to know

This page reports an absence, and an absence is the hardest thing to report honestly: it can be disproved by a single document we did not find. If a filming ordinance exists here — published, unpublished, adopted last month or a decade ago — we would rather replace this page with a proper guide.

The finding is dated September 22, 2026. Treat it as a snapshot. If you obtain the ordinance from the clerk, or if the municipality publishes one, tell us and we will rewrite this page around the document.

Common questions

Does Ringwood, NJ require a film permit?

Almost certainly yes, but the municipality does not publish the rules. We searched its codified code and its uncodified-laws register on September 22, 2026 and found no filming chapter. Ringwood is nonetheless certified Film Ready by the State, which means the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission was satisfied that a process and a liaison exist. Contact the clerk's office and ask for the filming ordinance and the permit application.

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

We do not know, and we are not going to guess. No fee schedule is published in the municipal code or on the municipal website as of September 22, 2026. Nothing published by the Borough states a filming fee. Ask the clerk's office for the fee and whether a daily rate applies on top, and get the answer in writing.

Is Ringwood Film Ready certified?

Yes. Ringwood appears on the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission's published certified-localities list, which we read in full on September 22, 2026. Certification means the Commission was satisfied there is a designated liaison, a permit process and a location inventory. It does not require the municipality to publish the ordinance online, which is the most likely explanation for the gap.

Can I film in Ringwood without a permit?

Do not assume so. An ordinance we cannot find is not permission. Street closures, parking, sidewalk obstruction, noise and police staffing are regulated in every New Jersey municipality whether or not there is a filming chapter, and this municipality is State-certified, which implies a filming process exists. Call the clerk's office before you commit to a location. A single phone call is cheaper than a crew standing on a street it has no right to be on.

Official sources

OfficialNJ Motion Picture & Television Commission, Film Ready certified localities
MunicipalRingwood Borough Code on eCode360

Checked September 22, 2026 against the official municipal sources listed above. 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.

More town production guides

Comparing municipalities? See every Film Ready town in New Jersey, or search a specific town’s published permit, fee and contact details in the New Jersey Film Permit Finder.