One of the best things about shooting in Nashville isn't just what you can find in the city.
It's what you can find within an hour of it.
Nashville sits in the middle of a surprisingly diverse landscape. Base your production here and you can access downtown streets, suburban neighborhoods, farms, forests, lakes, small towns, rolling hills and wide-open countryside — often without turning a location move into an all-day affair.
For commercial photography, advertising, branded content and motion productions that need multiple looks, Middle Tennessee gives you a lot to work with.
So, what can you actually shoot within roughly an hour of Nashville?
Farms, Barns + Open Fields
This is Tennessee. We have farms.
But there's much more variety than the stereotypical red barn.
Around Nashville you'll find working farms, horse properties, cattle farms, contemporary farmhouses, historic barns, agricultural buildings, fenced pastures and large stretches of rolling open land.
Depending on the creative, you can find something polished and aspirational or something much more rustic and lived-in.
Areas south and west of Nashville — including Franklin, Leiper's Fork, College Grove, Thompson's Station and surrounding rural communities — are particularly strong places to start looking.
For automotive, lifestyle, fashion, food and outdoor campaigns, the combination of open land and relatively easy access from Nashville can be incredibly useful.
Small Town America
Need a Main Street without building one?
Middle Tennessee has plenty of options.
Within roughly an hour of Nashville you'll find small downtowns with historic storefronts, brick buildings, courthouse squares, old gas stations, diners, churches, sidewalks and residential streets.
Franklin offers a more polished historic downtown, while communities like Springfield, Gallatin, Lebanon, Ashland City, Columbia and Watertown can give you very different versions of small-town Tennessee.
Go a little farther off the main roads and things can get even more interesting.
For productions looking for classic Americana, these communities can provide an enormous amount of visual value in a relatively small footprint.
Country Roads
Sometimes the brief isn't asking for a destination at all.
It just needs the road.
Middle Tennessee is full of winding two-lane roads, tree tunnels, rolling hills, farmland, fences, bridges and stretches of roadway that feel miles away from a major city.
This can be particularly useful for automotive campaigns.
Instead of traveling several hours from your production base just to find rural roads and open landscapes, you can begin finding them surprisingly quickly once you leave Nashville.
And because the terrain varies throughout Middle Tennessee, the same general region can offer heavily wooded roads, rolling farmland and wide-open countryside.
Forests + Trails
You don't have to drive to the Smoky Mountains to put trees in front of the camera.
Nashville and the surrounding region have extensive forests, hiking trails, wooded roads and natural areas.
Tennessee's Division of Forestry manages 16 State Forests covering roughly 184,000 acres statewide, while Middle Tennessee also has numerous state parks and natural areas. Explore Tennessee State Forests through the Tennessee Department of Agriculture.
Closer to Nashville, areas such as Warner Parks, Radnor Lake, Long Hunter State Park, Cedars of Lebanon State Park and Montgomery Bell State Park provide examples of how quickly the landscape can shift from urban Nashville to dense Tennessee woods.
Commercial access and filming requirements vary by property, so public parks and forests should always be vetted before presenting them as a shoot option.
But visually?
You have plenty of woods to work with.
Lakes, Rivers + Creeks
Middle Tennessee also gives productions access to a surprising amount of water.
The Cumberland River runs directly through Nashville, while Old Hickory Lake, Percy Priest Lake and the Harpeth River provide very different waterfront environments within easy reach of the city.
Move farther into the surrounding countryside and you'll find creeks, riverbanks, swimming holes, docks, marinas and private waterfront properties.
Old Hickory Lake alone stretches through both Davidson and Sumner counties and is part of Tennessee's statewide network of major recreational lakes.
For lifestyle, outdoor, automotive and hospitality work, water can often be incorporated into a Nashville-based shoot without relocating the production several hours away.
Suburban America
Not every brief needs a sweeping Tennessee vista.
Sometimes you need a driveway.
Or a cul-de-sac.
Or a family home with a two-car garage and enough front lawn for talent to throw a football around.
Nashville's surrounding communities offer everything from established mid-century neighborhoods to newer subdivisions, large suburban homes, ranch houses and quiet residential streets.
Brentwood, Franklin, Hendersonville, Mount Juliet, Goodlettsville and communities throughout Davidson and Williamson counties can provide a huge range of residential looks.
For national advertising, that's valuable because the location doesn't necessarily have to read as Tennessee.
It can simply read as home.
Historic Homes + Estates
Middle Tennessee has no shortage of historic architecture.
You'll find Greek Revival homes, Victorian houses, historic farmhouses, antebellum architecture, old estates and properties sitting on significant acreage.
Some feel distinctly Southern.
Others can play much more anonymously.
For productions, the real win can be finding a property that combines the right architecture with enough surrounding land to support the production itself.
A beautiful historic home is useful.
A beautiful historic home with parking, holding, catering space and room for trucks is much more useful.
Americana
This is another category where Nashville punches above its weight.
Old gas stations. Roadside markets. Dive bars. Motels. Diners. General stores. Auto shops. Barber shops. Churches. Warehouses. Honky-tonks. Feed stores. Weathered signs.
Some are beautifully preserved.
Some definitely are not.
Both can be useful.
If your creative calls for something that feels Southern, rural, blue-collar, musical, nostalgic or just unmistakably American, Middle Tennessee has an enormous amount to explore.
Industrial + Grittier Locations
Nashville isn't all green fields and pretty porches.
The city and surrounding communities also have warehouses, loading docks, industrial corridors, fabrication shops, garages, concrete structures, rail-adjacent areas and working commercial properties.
Neighborhoods and industrial pockets around Nashville can provide these looks without traveling far from downtown, while surrounding towns offer additional working industrial environments.
This can give a production a completely different visual language while staying within the same Nashville production base.
Quarries, Rock + Rugged Landscapes
Here's where Tennessee can start surprising people.
Middle Tennessee's limestone geology creates exposed rock faces, cliffs, quarries, caves and rugged landscapes that can look dramatically different from the rolling green countryside nearby.
Many quarries are active industrial properties and require substantial coordination to film, but private land and other properties throughout the region can provide similar rocky terrain.
It's another example of why it's worth scouting beyond Nashville proper.
Drive an hour and Tennessee can start looking like somewhere else entirely.
So, How Much Can You Actually Shoot?
Quite a lot.
Within roughly an hour of Nashville, a production can potentially access:
Downtown city streets. Suburban homes. Historic architecture. Small-town Main Streets. Farms. Barns. Forests. Trails. Creeks. Lakes. Marinas. Country roads. Open fields. Industrial properties. Americana. Quarries.
That's what makes Nashville particularly interesting as a production base.
You aren't locked into one visual identity.
A campaign could potentially shoot a contemporary home one day, a farm the next and a small-town Main Street after that — while keeping the crew, equipment, hotels and production infrastructure based in Nashville.
Tennessee has a long history of providing filmmakers with exactly that kind of range. The Tennessee Department of Tourist Development specifically highlights the state's combination of small towns, rural communities and natural landscapes in its coverage of productions filmed throughout Tennessee.
Explore Tennessee's official tourism resources.
Looking for Something Specific?
That's where we come in.
Nashville Location Company scouts, sources and vets locations throughout Nashville and Middle Tennessee for commercial photography, advertising, branded content, film and motion productions.
Send us your creative brief, reference images or location specs.
Whether you're looking for a modern home, winding country road, working farm, small-town Main Street, dive bar, creek, warehouse or something strangely specific that's difficult to explain until you see it, we'll figure out where to start looking.
You might be surprised by how much we can find within an hour of Nashville.