On Monday, November 9, 2026, Texas legislators and legislators-elect may begin filing bills for the 90th Legislature, which convenes at noon on Tuesday, January 12, 2027, according to the Texas Legislative Council’s dates of interest. If you run communications or training for a Texas state agency, that is not political trivia. It is the closing bell on your production year.

Because Texas state agency video production does not run on a marketing calendar. It runs on a legislative one, inside buildings that have their own filming rulebook, under state accessibility rules and an open-records statute that both reach the footage you have not even edited yet. None of that is true of a city client across town, and all of it is concentrated in a ten-block stretch of downtown Austin.

Here are the seven rules that decide a state agency film in this city, in the order they actually bite.

What this playbook covers

• Rule 1: The biennium, not the fiscal year, sets your shoot window
• Rule 2: Fourteen days, and the Capitol does not open for you at 9am
• Rule 3: If it is an advertisement, it cannot be filmed in the Capitol at all
• Rule 4: Your crew size is an insurance decision
• Rule 5: Most of your real video demand is mandated training
• Rule 6: Captions are a Texas rule before they are a federal one
• Rule 7: Assume your raw footage is public information
• Public-sector work we have actually produced in Texas
• Where our Austin crews work
• Frequently asked questions

Rule 1: The biennium, not the fiscal year, sets your shoot window

Texas appropriates money two years at a time, and the Legislature meets in regular session in odd-numbered years. For an agency communications shop that produces one structural consequence: the months when your leadership is available, your subject-matter experts are not in hearings, and your building is not full of members and staff are the even-numbered-year months. We are in the last of them.

Work backwards from January 12, 2027. A film that needs executive sign-off, a legal review and a subject-matter expert on camera is a six-to-ten-week project in a state agency, not a three-week one. Scripting in November, principal photography in December, delivery in January is a real schedule. Scripting in January is not, and the November 9 bill-filing date is the point at which your agency’s senior people start reading drafts instead of yours.

Every city communications team we work with asks when the council votes. State agencies have to ask when the session starts, because the session does not just occupy the calendar. It closes the building.

Rule 2: Fourteen days, and the Capitol does not open for you at 9am

This is the rule that surprises people who have only produced corporate work, and it is published in plain language. The Texas State Preservation Board’s Capitol Production Policy governs filming and photography in the Capitol, the Capitol Extension, the Capitol grounds, the Visitors Center, the Capitol Mall, the State Cemetery and the Robert E. Johnson, John H. Reagan and Sam Houston buildings.

The operative terms for anyone planning Texas state agency video production on that campus:

• A minimum of 14 days advance notice is required for all proposed production activities. Changes go in writing to the Capitol Events office at least 24 hours ahead.
• Production is generally prohibited during standard business hours, 8:00am to 5:30pm on weekdays, during legislative sessions, and whenever the board considers it disruptive. The board specifically requests that production be limited to Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
• A long list of rooms is simply off limits, including both chambers, the Original Governor’s Office, the Treasury, the Legislative Library, the Supreme Courtroom, the Appeals Courtroom, the Agricultural Museum Room, the Secretary of State’s Office and the Governor’s Reception Room. The Legislature may authorise chamber production for governmental purposes, which is a separate conversation with a separate decision-maker.
• Moving-image projects need approval from both the board and the Texas Film Commission, and the board holds final approval rights. Affected stakeholders have to sign off too.
• Nothing may be attached to the building. Modifying the buildings or grounds is strictly prohibited, contact with furnishings, artwork and architectural surfaces is out, and all production equipment must be freestanding with a stable base.

Read that list as a production brief rather than as red tape and it tells you exactly what to do: plan the Capitol as a weekend exterior and public-space unit, shoot your interviews somewhere you control, and never make the Capitol the location on which the whole film depends.

Rule 3: If it is an advertisement, it cannot be filmed in the Capitol at all

The single most expensive misunderstanding in this market is treating the Capitol as a free backdrop. Under Texas Administrative Code Rule 111.15, cited in the board’s own policy, film or video production for commercial advertising purposes inside the Capitol is strictly prohibited. The policy also states plainly that it does not apply to news-gathering by the press, which is why a reporter can stand where your crew cannot.

For a state agency, the practical line is about what the film is for. A recruitment film, a public information piece, a training module or an orientation video is governmental communication. A sponsor-facing promotional spot, a vendor case study shot on state premises or anything a reasonable person would call advertising is a different animal, and it belongs somewhere else entirely. Deciding that before the location request is filed is the cheapest hour anyone spends on the project.

Agencies that are not Capitol tenants have an easier version of this problem and a different landlord. The Texas Facilities Commission’s Capitol Complex tenant resources cover the state-owned office buildings where most of the actual work happens, the William B. Travis Building, the George H.W. Bush Building, the Barbara Jordan Building, the Central Service Building and the Rusk Building among them. Two details from that page matter to a shoot: badging runs on office hours, with the Central Service Building lobby open 7:30am to 4:30pm on weekdays and the Bush Building portico closed over lunch, and Capitol Complex Phase II construction is still live, with the Travis lobby only partially reopened. Your crew’s access is a badge question and your exteriors are a construction question.

Rule 4: Your crew size is an insurance decision

Most producers size a crew around the creative. On state property the certificate of insurance sizes it for you.

The Capitol Production Policy requires commercial general liability of $1,000,000 with a $5,000,000 umbrella, automobile liability of $1,000,000, and workers’ compensation at statutory limits, each with a waiver of subrogation, and production is not permitted without a signed location agreement and proof of insurance. Then comes the clause worth memorising: the requirement may be waived only if hand-held, non-cabled cameras are used and no vehicles or props are required on the grounds.

That one sentence defines two completely different productions. A two-person handheld unit with on-camera audio and no stands can work a lighter approval path. The moment you add a cable, a light stand, a grip truck or a prop, you are in full-certificate territory, with reimbursable board staff time, Capitol DPS officers billed per officer and a board electrician on the invoice if you need power. Neither version is wrong. Pricing them as if they were the same project is.

Rule 5: Most of your real video demand is mandated training

Agency communications teams tend to think of video as outward-facing. In Texas, the steadiest demand is internal and statutory, and it is the part of Texas state agency video production that gets commissioned every single year regardless of budget mood.

Start with cybersecurity. Under House Bill 3834, the Department of Information Resources certifies training programs and state and local governments must train their employees annually on a certified program. The requirement reaches employees who use a government computer for at least 25 percent of their duties, elected and appointed officers, and contractors with access to a state system or database during the contract term. Entities certify compliance by August 31 each year, under Government Code sections 2054.519 and 2054.5191.

Then open-records training. The Attorney General’s office states that under Government Code section 552.012, members of a multimember governmental body, the governing officer of a single-officer body and the officer for public information must complete Public Information Act training within 90 days of taking the oath or assuming the responsibilities of office. The course runs not less than one and not more than two hours, a public official may assign a coordinator to complete it instead, and the resulting certificate must be retained and made available for public inspection on request.

Now add the reason this matters commercially. The State Auditor’s Office reported in February 2026 that statewide classified employee turnover in fiscal year 2025 was 15.4 percent excluding interagency transfers, down from 16.5 percent the year before and the lowest rate since fiscal year 2010, on 23,172 separations. Retirement, better pay and benefits, and working conditions led the reasons employees gave, and the report noted that limited opportunity to work remotely and location or transportation issues rose substantially.

A 15.4 percent turnover rate is good news for the state and a standing production requirement for you. Every one of those vacancies gets filled by someone who has to be onboarded, trained on a certified cybersecurity program, and in some cases certified under the Public Information Act, and a cohort that increasingly cites commute and remote work as reasons for leaving is a cohort that will not be assembled in a conference room for a live session. That is a video library, not a video.

Rule 6: Captions are a Texas rule before they are a federal one

Vendors pitching Austin agencies usually arrive quoting the federal ADA Title II web rule. Agencies here are already working to a state framework that predates that conversation, and knowing it is a credibility test.

Texas Government Code Chapter 2054, Subchapter M requires access to electronic and information resources by individuals with disabilities. Beneath it, 1 Texas Administrative Code Chapter 206 covers websites, with section 206.50 addressing state agencies and section 206.70 institutions of higher education, and Chapter 213 covers electronic and information resources generally, with section 213.12 specifically titled Video and Multimedia for agencies. In a May 2025 presentation to the Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities, the state’s Statewide Digital Accessibility Officer set out that framework and stated that the web accessibility standard is now WCAG 2.1 Level AA, listing closed captioning for video among the Chapter 206 requirements.

What that means on a production schedule is boring and important. Captions, a transcript and, where the content is instructional, an audio-described version belong in the original scope as deliverables. They cost a fraction there and a premium as a change order two years later, and an agency that has to retrofit a training library is paying twice for work it could have bought once. Confirm which sections apply to your particular body with your own counsel and accessibility coordinator, then write them into the statement of work either way.

Rule 7: Assume your raw footage is public information

This is the rule that separates state agency work from every corporate project a crew has ever shot, and it is the one most vendors have never thought about.

Information written, produced, collected, assembled or maintained in connection with the transaction of official business by a governmental body is subject to the Texas Public Information Act, and the Act is not limited to paper. Interview outtakes, B-roll, script drafts, the comment thread on a review cut and the email in which a deputy director asked for a line to be softened can all be records held in connection with official business. Exceptions exist and the Attorney General’s office decides contested ones, which is precisely the point: whether a particular file is released is not a decision your production company gets to make.

Three habits follow from that, and we build them into agency projects as standard:

• Shoot as if the outtakes could be published. No off-the-record jokes rolling, no practice takes in which an employee speculates about policy, and a clear verbal boundary with every interviewee about what the camera is for.
• Keep review comments in one documented channel the agency controls, rather than scattered across personal messages, so that a future request has a clean place to look.
• Agree retention and delivery of raw media in the contract. Who holds the card archive, for how long, and in what format the agency can take possession of it.

Handled early, none of this slows a project down. Handled late, it is the reason a finished film sits unpublished while someone works out what has to be produced. It is the same discipline we hold across our government video production company practice, where procurement information sits alongside the work itself.

Public-sector work we have actually produced in Texas

Tone Films has made films for Plano PD, Carrollton PD, Addison Police, Addison Fire, the Denco Area 9-1-1 District, Fort Worth ISD, IDEA Public Schools and St. Mary Parish in Louisiana. The common thread is public bodies with approval chains, legal review and audiences who can tell when a film is talking down to them.

Here is a film we produced for Fort Worth ISD, at Alice Contreras Elementary. It is a public school district rather than a state agency, but it is the shape a good public-sector film takes: real people in a real building, explaining their own work, with nothing in it that needed a soundstage.

More of that work sits in our portfolio. If your question is less about rules and more about how agencies in this market actually contract for film, our companion piece on the four ways Austin public agencies buy video covers quotes, formal solicitations, cooperative contracts and federally funded work. And if the deliverable is a session rather than a film, the constraints we set out for hybrid events and live streaming in Austin apply to agency briefings too.

Where our Austin crews work

Our studio sits at 555 E 5th Street in downtown Austin, which puts a crew inside fifteen minutes of the Capitol Complex, the agency buildings along San Jacinto and Congress, and the Travis County and City of Austin facilities nearby. We work Downtown and the Capitol Complex, East Austin, South Congress, Rainey Street, the Domain and the Zilker and Barton Hills area, and we travel statewide for agency work with regional offices.

The underlying capability is the same one that carries our conference, event, medical and public-sector work: multi-camera coverage with fast turnaround and compliance literacy, which in this city means knowing the production policy before the location request rather than after it. If you are evaluating an Austin video production company for state agency work specifically, ask how many days of notice they think the Capitol requires. If the answer is not fourteen, they have not read the policy.

Agency programs increasingly land in borrowed rooms with their own AV arrangements, and we set out what that asks of a camera crew in the questions Austin staging and AV teams ask us.

Frequently asked questions

Do you need a permit to film inside the Texas Capitol?

You need an approved application and a signed location agreement, not a permit in the municipal sense. The Texas State Preservation Board’s Capitol Production Policy requires a minimum of 14 days advance notice for all proposed production activities, approval from both the board and the Texas Film Commission with the board holding final approval rights, and proof of insurance before production begins. Production is generally prohibited during business hours of 8:00am to 5:30pm on weekdays and during legislative sessions, and the board requests that production be limited to Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Can a Texas state agency use Capitol footage in an advertisement?

Not if the footage is produced in the Capitol for that purpose. The board’s policy cites Texas Administrative Code Rule 111.15 in stating that film or video production for commercial advertising purposes is strictly prohibited. Governmental communication such as public information, recruitment, orientation and training sits in a different category, which is why defining what the film is for should happen before the location request is filed.

Is raw footage from a state agency video a public record in Texas?

Assume it may be. The Texas Public Information Act reaches information collected, assembled or maintained in connection with the transaction of official business by a governmental body, and that is not limited to documents. Outtakes, B-roll and review correspondence can fall within it, exceptions are decided by the Attorney General’s office rather than by a production company, and the safe practice is to shoot and document as if the material could be released.

Do Texas state agency videos need captions?

Plan for captions, a transcript and, for instructional content, an audio-described version. Texas Government Code Chapter 2054, Subchapter M requires access to electronic and information resources by individuals with disabilities, 1 Texas Administrative Code Chapter 206 covers state agency websites and Chapter 213 covers electronic and information resources with a section specific to video and multimedia, and the state’s Statewide Digital Accessibility Officer stated in a May 2025 presentation that the web accessibility standard is now WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Confirm which sections bind your body with your counsel, and scope the deliverables either way.

When should a Texas state agency schedule a video shoot?

In even-numbered years and outside session where possible. The 90th Legislature convenes at noon on Tuesday, January 12, 2027 and bill filing opens on Monday, November 9, 2026, so leadership attention and building access both tighten from the autumn onward. For a film needing executive sign-off, legal review and a subject-matter expert on camera, scripting in November and shooting in December is a realistic path to a January delivery.

Talk to us about your agency’s next film

If you are a communications director, training lead or public information officer at a Texas state agency and you have a film to make before session, the useful first conversation is about three things: whether any of it has to happen on state property, whether the piece is governmental communication or something closer to promotion, and what your accessibility and records obligations are. Tell us those and we will tell you honestly what is achievable before January and what should wait until spring. Get in touch with our Austin team.

About the author

About the author — Andrei Tone is the founder and director of Tone Films, a video production company with studios in 45 U.S. cities. He has directed films for police and fire departments, 9-1-1 districts, school districts, hospitals and brands including Disney Junior and Cuisine Solutions.