Production Guide
For a typical interior shoot at a Las Vegas hotel-casino — done with the property's agreement, no county film permit involved — the insurance requirement comes from the property itself: most resorts ask for at least one million dollars in general liability insurance naming the property as an additional insured, and sometimes more for higher-risk elements. Clark County's own one-million-dollar minimum, naming Clark County and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, applies instead when a shoot pulls a county film permit — exteriors, work that touches the public right-of-way, or drone operation.
Which entity sets the insurance requirement depends on whether a county film permit is even part of the shoot. Clark County does not require a film permit for filming inside a building or home when the production has the property owner's agreement — the permit applies to exteriors, public right-of-way work, and special effects such as pyrotechnics or prop weapons. Most video production at a Strip resort — a conference room, a ballroom, a lobby, a stage inside a convention hall — falls on the interior side of that line, so the county's permit-linked insurance requirement never comes into play; the property's own insurance requirement does instead.
When a county permit is required, the county sets a floor: one million dollars in liability insurance from a US-licensed carrier, with Clark County and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department named as additional insured on the certificate. That figure is the government-side minimum for filming that touches public property — it says nothing about what an individual resort will ask for on an interior shoot, which is the more common case for most productions covered here.
Whether or not a county permit is in play, a resort still runs its own approval track before letting an outside crew on property. Individual hotel-casinos commonly require their own certificate of insurance — typically one million dollars in general liability naming the property itself as an additional insured — plus a signed location agreement that covers access windows, escort requirements, and house rules specific to that building. This runs through the property's own risk management, legal, or security office, separate from any government permit, and it can take longer to clear than county paperwork when a permit also applies — plan for the property's timeline either way.
Naming an entity as additional insured is not the same as simply carrying a policy — it extends a portion of the production's own liability coverage to protect that entity if a claim arises from the production's activity on their property. That is why Clark County and LVMPD appear on the county-required certificate, and why a resort separately asks to be added: each entity wants direct protection under the production's policy, not just assurance that a policy exists somewhere. A certificate that lists the right coverage amount but omits the required additional-insured language does not satisfy either the county or the property, even though the dollar figure looks correct at a glance.
The one-million-dollar figure is a floor, not a ceiling. A shoot that adds elements a property considers higher-risk — drone operation, elevated rigging, generator or lighting trucks staged in a loading area — can prompt a property to ask for a higher coverage amount or additional endorsements beyond the standard certificate. This is worth raising with the property's risk management contact as soon as the shot list includes anything beyond a straightforward interview or b-roll setup, rather than discovering the requirement after a certificate has already been submitted.
Photographing or filming the gaming floor — slot machines, table games, the pit — is commonly restricted at Las Vegas properties, but that restriction comes from each property's own house policy rather than a state rule you can point to. Do not assume a blanket state rule governs this; ask the specific property directly what its gaming-floor policy allows before planning a shot list that includes it. See our guide to video production at Las Vegas casino resorts for how these access rules typically work elsewhere on the Strip. Properties vary in how strictly they enforce this and what they will approve with advance notice.
Every Strip shoot we produce, including our ongoing work at Mandalay Bay, carries its own certificate of insurance, issued to name whichever entities the county permit and the property's location agreement require — Clark County, LVMPD, and the resort itself, as applicable. We handle this before the crew is ever booked for the day, so a client is not discovering a missing additional-insured line the morning of the shoot. If a property adds a requirement we have not seen before, we get an updated certificate turned around rather than showing up short.
We build the insurance and location-agreement paperwork into the production timeline rather than treating it as an afterthought, on every Strip property we work. For more on what a specific casino property requires beyond insurance, see our guide to filming at Las Vegas casinos.
Related: corporate video production in Las Vegas, our corporate interview and headshot studio, and testimonial and customer story video.
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