THERE is a lot of glamour associated with film, but there’s no denying the hard work that goes into delivering a quality movie.

Bradford City of Film deals with location enquiries from film and TV companies every week. In the past two years these have increased significantly, as the UK film and TV sector enjoys a golden era of production.

Testament of Youth, based on Vera Brittain’s First World War memoirs, was shot here earlier this year, and is the latest addition to the Bradford Film Heritage interactive app highlighting film and TV production in the district.

For this shoot, the call comes from an organisation called Creative England, a national agency established in 2012 to nurture and support film and digital creative industries outside London. Our contact at Creative England tells us to expect a call from a locations manager for a new feature film seeking locations across the North of England. Later that afternoon we get the call from the locations manager. They are looking for a number of streets and doorways to create London in 1914, they have been to the Little Germany area of Bradford before and would like to come and have another look around.

The role of a locations manager is very important. They are responsible for making all the practical arrangements for a film shoot taking place outside the studio and need to research and identify appropriate sites and organise access. In addition, the role usually includes managing sites throughout the shooting process. This involves working to strict budgetary and time limits and maintaining a high standard of health and safety and security.

As with most film and TV productions, timing is crucial and in this industry time is money.

Once the crew have set to work on a job, any unnecessary delays start to cost and if you have a crew in excess of 250 people that starts to add up. Throw in the cost of the cast and star talent and we’re talking serious money.

We arrange to meet the locations manager and an assistant scout on site the following week and he has asked if we can bring the people responsible for highways and car parking.

As they want to shoot in Little Germany they’ll need to agree a traffic management plan with the highways department to ensure that businesses and residents can get around with the least inconvenience.

The film crew also has vehicles they need to park near the shoot. These include changing facilities, portable toilets, known in the industry as ‘dolly wagons’, and catering facilities.

Also required is space for make-up and costumes for up to 50 extras drafted in to make the streets look busy. I offer rooms at the Design Exchange where the Bradford Film Office is based, adjacent to the chosen street for the main action.

After a tour of Little Germany they establish the street they’d like to use. Photographs are taken and discussions on traffic management and parking arrangements take place.

I invite them to the film office while photos are emailed to the art director. An hour later the locations manager is off to secure another location on the Yorkshire coast. The scout prepares letters to be distributed to residents and businesses on streets surrounding the chosen locations.

A week later around 12 people, including the art director, director and a camera man, arrive for a look around. Three weeks later the shoot starts.

In between we’ve had a series of phone calls and emails: “Can we use your offices from 5am to 10pm?” “Do you know who owns the apartments on East Parade?” “Can we ask residents not to hang their laundry in the window on the day of the shoot?”

The night before the shoot, art department teams arrive, assessing lampposts and street signs, and how to make them look 1914 with the least disruption possible.

A member of my team opens the office at 5am – when the circus really comes to town. Clothes rails are unloaded off a van and half a dozen trailers and technical support vehicles are setting up in the car park.

On the street, the art department is erecting 1914 street signs while extras arrive for wardrobe and make-up. Corridors are filled with women dressed as suffragettes as a horse-drawn carriage pulls up.

As extras file into a committee room, now their green room, there’s a surreal moment seeing people in 1914 costume browsing smart phones. I almost bump into leading man Kit Harrington, of Game of Thrones fame, rushing upstairs.

Later, I catch the final shoots as traffic and members of the public are diverted around the filming area. Filming finishes around 5pm but the art department stays until late putting everything back to normal. Then it all moves onto the next location in North Yorkshire.

Next morning there is no trace that they were here in Bradford.

Testament of Youth will be released at cinemas this autumn.