All the Oxford on campus filming locations where Emerald Fennell shot Saltburn

Students literally loaned their actual dorm rooms to the production team

5 months ago

Saltburn, the latest film by Academy Award winner Emerald Fennell, is all everyone’s speaking about right now mostly due to the antics of Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi, the two leads who are causing chaos on their press tour and have a homoerotic friendship seemingly on and off screen. Those two aside, one of the most striking things about Saltburn is the filming locations, not only the impressive manor house used for the titular estate belonging to Elordi’s Felix Catton, but for all the on campus places at the University of Oxford shown off on the big screen. Often, other places and interiors are shot in film rather than Oxford University itself, but Emerald Fennell was determined to shoot Saltburn on location – here are all of the filming locations used to capture the chaos of going to Oxford.

Radcliffe Square

Via Warner Bros

Emerald Fennell shot a lot of the Oxford Saltburn scenes in Radcliffe Square, one of the most easily recognised areas of the filming locations. Radcliffe Camera, the library in the centre, dominates the scenes it features in thanks to its sheer impressiveness. Filming here was logistically difficult, not only because production wanted to avoid students but also to dodge tourists who obviously flock to the historic uni. Producer Josey McNamara says “It’s a beautifully historic place that obviously we wanted to be protective and respectful of. And then there were logistical considerations when it came to locking off that area [for filming], because obviously it’s also a big tourist attraction.”

To avoid students, Emerald Fennell and co hit the Oxford filming locations for Saltburn in early September before everyone came to start studying.

Actual Oxford dorms

Students “kindly loaned” their actual rooms to the production team to film Oliver and Felix in their dorms. It was important to Emerald Fennell to actually shoot in and around Oxford. She says “The thing about something like Oxford is that often it’s so beautiful, so mysterious, so walled-in, so ’elite’, I suppose. But, of course, in the rooms, they’re shitty and people are throwing up in their sinks.”

Josey McNamara added “There were some conversations about trying to mirror Oxford somewhere else. It’s a very expensive location so sometimes crews use St. Albans as a stand-in, but we decided to shoot in Oxford and budget accordingly because we wanted the audience to recognise some of the locations we were shooting in.”

WERE YOU THE STUDENTS WHOSE ROOMS WERE FILMED FOR SALTBURN?! The Tab wants to hear from YOU! Email me at [email protected].

Saltburn is in cinemas everywhere now. For all the latest film, reality TV and entertainment news, like Pop Culture Shrine on Facebook.