Posted 28 January, 2008 in NY News
The NYS Gov. just introduced a new Finance Bill that would increase the NYS Production Credit from 10% to 15%, and would NOW include “above the line” (actors, directors, and producers, etc.) which is currently not a qualified expenditure in NYS & NYC.
The proposed legislation does not apply to the NYC Production Credit.
Posted 27 January, 2008 in FilmUSA
Please note that Illinois has an incentive bill which they are hoping will pass soon. Florida is technically out of money until 7/1/08, but if anyone in line drops out, monies will be available before 7/1/08.
January U.S. Production Incentives Update
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ALASKA – the new incentives bill has been drafted, and will be presented to the legislature soon. This will be one of the most generous incentives available, including a transferable tax credit of 30%, with an additional 10% for local hires. Quick action is anticipated. (Dama Chasle and Jeff Begun helped create this legislation, which is sponsored by Senator Ellis).
ARIZONA – applications for the current fiscal year are still being accepted. On February they will begin accepting applications for commercials and music videos.
ILLINOIS – the state did not renew its incentive program, which has consequently expired. The film commissioner hopes that a new program will be in place by the end of the month.
INDIANA – a new incentives program has been passed; details to follow.
NEW JERSEY – The increase to $30 million per year, which was approved last year but not signed by the governor, has again been presented to a legislative committee.
NEW MEXICO has clarified part of its program — per diem payments to both residents and nonresidents qualify when paid for services performed in New Mexico. Per diem payments to residents when providing services out of state do not qualify (although wages paid to residents while working out of state sometimes do qualify).
PENNSYLVANIA – applications are still being accepted for this fiscal year.
COLORADO, IDAHO, MICHIGAN, VIRGINIA and WEST VIRGINIA are working on major changes to their programs.
UTAH, FLORIDA, MARYLAND and MISSOURI are out of funds for the current fiscal year, but interested producers should contact the film commissioners, as funds sometimes become available. ______________________________________________________
Posted 27 January, 2008 in FilmUSA
Observer at Large
“2007 in Review: Incentives, Global Content, Portable Viewing”
By Kathleen Milnes
I’m a data junkie. I spend a lot of my time with facts - facts about dollars
spent, people employed, students educated, places impacted. So for my year
in review, I’m sticking to the facts about public policy, technology’s
impacts and workforce development in the entertainment industries (well.
with just a smidge of analysis).
I’ve identified four major trends in 2007: 1) the expanding and often
enhanced pool of production incentives; 2) the global nature of content
creation; 3) the explosion of new outlets for content; and 4) efforts to
retain, grow, or often steal an artistically and technologically savvy
workforce. I’m covering three in this column and write about workforce
issues in the next issue.
Incentives
Continuing an accelerating trend, new incentives were enacted or existing
ones were enhanced across the U.S. and the globe. There are only five states
that have no incentives - California being one of them. New production
incentives were passed in legislatures in Texas, Michigan, Wyoming and
Wisconsin, to name a few. Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and
Florida sweetened their offers to keep up. Washington State is a good
example of new programs to grow local production by providing direct grants
in addition to production tax incentives.
Why? Because they work! The granddaddy of this trend in the U.S. is the
state of Louisiana, which now ranks third in the number of films produced.
A recent study showed that employment in Louisiana’s film industry has grown
23 percent per year since 2001, the highest growth rate in the nation. The
Louisiana industry supported 5,437 jobs in 2003. By 2005, an additional
13,445 jobs were created. Wages have increased more than 31 percent each
year. In 2003, film spending added $7.4 million to the state economy in the
form of wages, profits, sales taxes, etc. In 2007, this rose to nearly $342
million.
In New Mexico, the financial impact of film production in the state has
risen from $44.4 million in 2003 to an estimated $479.7 million for 2007.
The number of days film employees work rose from 28,120 in 2003 to 173,376.
And the number of IATSE members of has risen from 70 a few years ago to
1,300. Sound stages have sprouted in Albuquerque and Sony Pictures
Imageworks has announced plans to expand there as well.
This scene is being played out across the world as the demand for content
grows and the competition between countries, regions and states becomes more
intense. And in all of these locations, the development of sound stages,
equipment rental facilities and postproduction houses grows in direct
response.
Global Content Creation
Since film was invented, countries around the world have created their own
films primarily for their own audiences. In many countries, filmmaking is
supported by public dollars because it is viewed as a cultural product.
Over the last year, partnerships between U.S. studios and production
companies have sprung up in China and India. A few examples: Warner China,
the first Chinese-American film company, established in 2004, is now
distributing original film content produced specifically for a Chinese
audience via mobile phones. Sony Pictures Entertainment has created or
invested in over 40 international networks in more than 130 countries
reaching more than 300 million viewers worldwide, including specialized
channels showing Japanese animation. In 2007, this initiative, called
ANIMAX, expanded into Central Europe and is now broadcast in Hungary,
Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. ANIMAX Germany launched in June
2007.
New Outlets for Content
According to my latest count, there are at least 50 original series
broadcasting webisodes on the Internet. More than 85 percent of U.S.
households are connected to the Internet via broadband, according to
Nielsen, while more than 30 percent of web users view live streaming video
(such as webisodes or streaming episodes of television series) and 20
percent watch saved video files (i.e., content downloaded from iTunes or
other consumer sites). And these numbers will only increase as technology
continues to evolve.
In June 2007, Nielsen released a progress report on its efforts to capture
the audience for all of these platforms called A2/M2 for Anytime Anywhere
Media Measurement. While audience numbers for these new platforms are not
yet available, there is some interesting research to date. For example, 19
percent of households have at least one personal video device. The largest
penetration is for portable DVD players (10 percent of households) and video
enabled cell phones (5 percent of households). However, playing video on a
personal device has not yet become an ingrained habit. Even among PVD
owners, about two-thirds responded that it had been more than a week since
they watched something on their portable player. Only four percent of
households own a video-enabled iPod or MP3 player.
Workforce Development
In the next issue I’ll update you on trends in workforce development around
the globe. Governments, schools and industry are teaming up to expand the
pool of talent to feed our ever-growing media-centric world. Taking a page
from Nielsen, maybe we should call this A3 entertainment - anytime,
anywhere, on any device. But the issue for you, dear reader, is who makes
it, and where?
Posted 12 January, 2008 in NY News
With the New York skyline changing on a daily basis, lensing in the Big Apple can be a tricky, painstaking task. Yet with the city’s 2005 Made in New York incentive program in full swing, 129 films have taken on the difficult job of transforming Gotham into a vision of the past, present and future — mixing practical locations, visual effects and studio space to achieve the desired effect.“We Own the Night” director James Gray was scrupulous about his vision for 1988-era New York City. “I think period movies are often done quite wrong,” he says. “I view history as an accumulation of detail. And what I see all the time is, ‘It’s 1972 …’ and then you hear awatcha, awatch and everyone’s dressed in bellbottoms. That’s not the way the world is! Some people are cutting-edge in 1972, and they wear that stuff and listen to Curtis Mayfield, but most people look like 1960 or ‘50. And that was the struggle: the creation of a sense of history that (extended) from 1988 before.”
That meant attention to the smallest detail, including changing all the visible “Walk/Don’t Walk” signs.
“The producer would come up to me with his hair falling out and go, ‘Jimmy, that costs $40,000! Will anyone notice?’ And the answer is yes, they notice all the time, they kill you for it,” Gray says.
“American Gangster” production designer Arthur Max also made sure to change street signs — as well as the lights themselves — to re-create Richie Roberts and Frank Lucas‘ 1970s-era Harlem.
“Having spent my early days as a student in New York during that period, I knew those locations very well,” Max says. “But the problem was that Harlem has been so gentrified. Most of the killers, drug dealers and hookers are gone. Now you can get a good latte and a panini there, so it was difficult to use the actual locations.”
Instead, Max moved Lucas’ center of operations 20 blocks north from the original address — 116th Street and 8th Avenue — to 136th Street. He also used all five boroughs as well as Governor’s Island and Newark to portray Lucas’ Harlem-based drug empire.
“We would always come up against new buildings and new building projects. In one case, we scouted this vacant lot on Frederick Douglass Boulevard and it was fine, then six weeks later there was a building there. That happened on many occasions all over the place. In the end, I found the nitty gritty of what Harlem was in the late ’60s/early ’70s in Newark.”
Newark also proved to be a saving grace for “Across the Universe” production designer Mark Friedberg, who searched everywhere for a location to double as the Times Square of the ’60s.
“We just couldn’t find that old, seedy place that Times Square used to be, so we ended up using streets in Newark.” But re-creating the old storefronts, particularly the sex shops, proved trickier than expected. “The location we worked in was this very pious Muslim community, so we had a lot of explaining to do, and we had to get it down right away,” he says.
Lasse Hallstrom’s “The Hoax” also harks back to pre-Giuiliani New York, which meant taking locations like Central Park and “messing it up just a little bit because (the story) took place before they cleaned up the city,” explains production designer Mark Ricker.
Disturbing one of the last green areas in Gotham is not an easy task due to the Central Park Conservancy’s restrictions on the use of heavy equipment on grass or the addition of any plants. That’s one reason “The Brave One” production designer Kristi Zea decided to find another location to shoot that film’s pivotal murder sequence, which takes place under a bridge in Central Park.
“We wound up shooting in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park because they were a lot more lenient about equipment and how we were going to be able to work inside the park,” she says.
Obstacles for contempo productions “Michael Clayton” and “Enchanted” — which focus on two very different aspects of the city’s personality, one strictly corporate, the other more fanciful — involved working with Midtown Manhattan crowds.
“We shot a couple of takes of George Clooney walking down the sidewalk without controlling the crowds, but then people started to recognize him, so we had to quit,” says “Clayton” production designer Kevin Thompson.
Pedestrians were no less curious about the sight of Amy Adams emerging from an actual manhole in the middle of Times Square.
“The (extras) in the immediate foreground were our people, but at a certain point you can’t control the crowds,” says “Enchanted” production designer Stuart Wurtzel. “It’s Times Square — it’s a very difficult place to get completely empty.”
That’s exactly the challenge that faced “I Am Legend,” in which Will Smith wanders through a deserted New York City. Although they relied on a set to simulate post-apocalyptic Times Square, production designer Naomi Shohan was able to empty key areas of the city, including the Grand Central Terminal viaduct, Herald Square and Washington Square Park.
“The most difficult thing was arranging to close down those principal parts of the town,” Shohan says. “There was a lot of diplomacy and support from the city of New York for us to be able to pull that off.”
Posted 3 January, 2008 in MO News
Missouri Film Commission sees increase in tax credit applications
Marshall Griffin, KWMU
JEFFERSON CITY, MO (2007-11-26)
Movie and television producers are taking more interest in Missouri, because
of the expanded tax credit that takes effect next year.
Missouri’s film tax credit was expanded from an annual cap of $1.5 million
to $4.5 million, as part of the package of tax breaks passed during the
special session in August.
Jerry Jones, Director of the Missouri Film Commission, says so far they’ve
received about a dozen applications and another dozen inquiries.
“Most of them are motion pictures…’ major’ is always up for
question…sometime s we’ve had stuff come in with big stars and didn’t go
anywhere, and we’ve had some smaller films that have done fairly well,”
Jones said.
To encourage more filmmakers to come to Missouri, the qualifying in-state
budget minimum for productions longer than 30 minutes will drop from
$300,000 to $100,000, and the minimum budget for programs under 30 minutes
will drop to $50,000.
Filmmakers will have to hire people from Missouri in order to qualify for
the tax credits.
“Anything they spend in Missouri, it can be payroll for Missouri crew or
Missouri cast…it can be renting Missouri equipment, Missouri purchases,
Missouri lodging, location fees, cost of food…whatever it is, if it’s
purchased in Missouri and it’s for the production of that film, it can count
toward the tax credit,” Jones said.
The expanded tax credit takes effect January 1st, 2008.
