Posted 22 March, 2008 in RI News
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, March 23, 2008
By Michael Janusonis
Journal Arts Writer
Bill and Angela Ryding, of Warwick, have found a post-retirement movie career working as extras on movies such as Underdog and 27 Dresses.
The Journal / Bob Thayer
Rhode Island had the New England playing field to itself when its new state tax-credit program attracted such Hollywood projects as the Brotherhood TV series and the Wesley Snipes movie Hard Luck to Providence in 2005.
Since then, Massachusetts and Connecticut have taken note and created tax-incentive programs of their own.
“Massachusetts saw our success and created their film-incentive law in 2006, which failed to have an impact in their state,” says Steven Feinberg, executive director of the Rhode Island Film & Television Office. “So they went back to the drawing board and copied our law and raised the ante slightly in 2007. Connecticut also copied our law in 2007, but instead of our 25-percent credit, they raised their credit to 30 percent.”
Karen Senich, the acting executive director of the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, in Hartford, which oversees the state’s film division, says that besides Connecticut’s more generous benefits to filmmakers, productions need to spend only $50,000 in the Nutmeg State to qualify, rather than the $300,000 required by Rhode Island’s law. This has meant a resuscitation of Connecticut’s film division, which she says is in the midst of going from a staff of one to a staff of four.
(Rhode Island has an executive director, a full-time paid assistant, a part-time Web designer and two unpaid college interns. The budget for the film office is $273,464; $213,255 is for personnel expenses and $60,209 is for operating expenses. Feinberg is paid $82,700 a year.)
“It’s about the economy, about creating jobs,” says Senich, who points to such big-ticket productions filmed in Connecticut after the tax credit went into force as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with Harrison Ford, Revolutionary Road with Leonardo DiCaprio, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 with Amber Tamblyn and America Ferrera.
Already the state has pledged $26 million in tax credits to 64 productions. However, Connecticut recently revised its law so outside venders wouldn’t be the principal beneficiaries, and the Rhode Island Division of Taxation has proposed doing the same here, taking the position that an expense only counts toward the credit if it is performed, purchased, provided or rented by a Rhode Island resident or vender. In Connecticut, as of Jan. 1, 2009, only 50 percent of expenses “incurred outside the state” will count toward the calculation of that state’s 30-percent tax credit. After Jan. 1, 2012, “no expenses or costs incurred outside the state and used within the state shall be eligible for a credit.”
Nick Paleologos, head of the Massachusetts Film Office, in Boston, reports much the same kind of success in attracting filmmakers to the Bay State since its new and improved tax-incentive program went into effect. Ten films were made in Massachusetts last year. That was up from two in 2006 and includes Pink Panther 2, The Box, Bachelor Number Two with Dane Cook, 21, The Women with Annette Bening, Meg Ryan, Bette Midler and Candice Bergen, The Lonely Maiden with Morgan Freeman, William H. Macy and Christopher Walken, and The Great Debaters, directed by Denzel Washington.
There were so many films that Paleologos says one of his biggest headaches was “just trying to make sure that one film crew wasn’t bumping into another.”
Posted 22 March, 2008 in CO News
House Finance Committee Will Consider Giving Movie Studios Financial Incentives To Shoot In The State
ReportingTerry Jessup
DENVER (CBS4) ― When Eddie Murphy came to Colorado last October to shoot his film Nowhereland, he and his Hollywood production crew left behind about $3.5 million and they only shot in the state for 12 days.
While the state enjoyed that small economic boost, there have only been about 10 big budget films shot here in the past 5 years and Colorado is now down to only about 1 percent of the total movie-making market share.
That’s why there’s a push to get more of Colorado featured the big screen. The Colorado Film Commission is backing proposed legislation to give tax incentives for production companies that shoot in Colorado.
According to the commission, Hollywood doesn’t come to the state of Colorado anymore just for the scenery.
“The film industry has dramatically changed in the past 5 years. We’ve gone from ‘Who has the best-looking mountains and most beautiful ocean?’ to ‘What is your incentive funding?’” said Marcia Morgan, the commission’s deputy director.
Incentive funding meaning: we’ll shoot here if you give us tax credits.
The latest proposal before state lawmakers would give movie makers a 25 percent tax credit on their total expenditure. That means if they spent $100 million on a production here, they would get $25 million back from the state.
“That’s the beauty of this plan. It’s a no-risk proposition for Colorado. We only give the money back if it’s first spent,” Morgan said.
Nowhereland’s spending spree definitely raised some eyebrows, as well as interest in the bill.
“They bought countless amounts of goods and services from the 16th Street Mall, for example. They filmed in Castle Rock and I understand they spent $10,000 in one afternoon at a King Soopers there,” Morgan said.
The bill will be presented to the House Finance Committee next Tuesday. Some of the fine print includes:
– A provision in the proposed law that says the moviemakers do have to prove where they spent it.
– The bill has a total cap of $25 million
– No production gets any money back unless they spend at least $250,000.
The Colorado Film Commission says 12 other states now have similar tax credit incentives.
There have been about 375 movies shot at least partially in Colorado over the last 110 years.
Eddie Murphy’s Nowhereland is set for release this fall.
(© MMVII CBS Television Stations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Posted 22 March, 2008 in RI News
Movie Money
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, March 23, 2008
Greg Gormley and Marcus Thomas returned to Rhode Island after building movie sets in Hollywood. They have converted an East Providence warehouse into a small studio suitable for special effects moviemaking. They also recently turned a 60,000-square-foot former Ocean State Job Lot warehouse, in North Kingstown, into a studio.
In 1990, Anne Mulhall left Rhode Island for what she hoped would be a career in show business. She first found work in New York as a TV actor, then she moved to Los Angeles, where she got experience behind the camera.
In 1998, she returned to Rhode Island for family reasons and hatched a plan to start a show business of her own. She formed LDI Casting in the hope of making her living casting actors for films and TV shows shot in New Eng- land.
Professional work was scarce. There was “maybe a movie a year and a Cardi’s commercial,” she recalled.
By 2004, rather than being a casting agent, Mulhall was really earning her living as a recreational therapist for people with Alzheimer’s.
Then, in 2005, Mulhall’s fortunes, and those of many others in the fledgling Rhode Island film industry, abruptly changed.
Steven Feinberg, the executive director of the Rhode Island Film & Television Office, prodded state lawmakers, especially House Speaker William J. Murphy, into creating a tax-incentive program for filmmakers patterned after successful programs in New Mexico and Louisiana. The Rhode Island law offers 25-percent state tax credits to filmmakers who spend more than $300,000 in the state. So if a movie production spends $20 million here, it gets $5 million worth of tax credits. The credits are negotiable. They can legally be sold, and at a discount, to others, who use them to offset their own state income or corporate tax obligation. Thus, a $1,000 piece of the movie company’s tax credit can be sold to a local taxpayer for $900. That person can then present it to the state tax office for its full $1,000 face value, saving that person $100 in the bargain.
The tax-credit bill had an immediate effect. In the three years since the bill was passed, nine feature films and two television series set up shop in Rhode Island, in addition to a number of commercials. Most prominent among the locally filmed ventures were the TV series Brotherhood and the feature movies Underdog, Dan in Real Life, Evening, Hachiko: A Dog’s Story and 27 Dresses.
Suddenly there was so much work that Mulhall says, “I can count on one hand how many weeks off I’ve had since 2005.”
Mulhall isn’t alone. She is one of hundreds of Rhode Islanders who have found work in the state’s nascent movie and TV industry in the last three years.
Moviemakers say they have been attracted to Rhode Island because of its welcoming attitude and the diversity of its architecture and landscape. But the tax credits are what sealed the deal. Thus, although 27 Dresses is set mostly in New York City, it filmed in Rhode Island for 40 days and in Manhattan for only 10.
Yet the fledgling Rhode Island TV and movie-production industry is now threatened as lawmakers struggle to close a massive state budget deficit and thousands face ejection from state-financed assistance programs. Many question whether the state can continue to award tax credits to Hollywood — so far totaling $30.8 million — when it is cutting essential human services to make ends meet.
Governor Carcieri has asked the state’s new office of tax-policy analysis to examine the costs and benefits of the program “to make sure the film tax credit isn’t more costly than it’s worth,” according to Jeff Neal, a spokesman for the governor.
But the film business also has key State House supporters. Speaker Murphy views the film industry as a way to expand Rhode Island’s economy, with several local colleges now offering film study programs. He asserted recently that “for every dollar spent in Rhode Island by the movie and television industry, the state is gaining 75 cents that it never had if not for this program.”
THE LOOMING budget debate on film tax credits especially worries those who have a personal financial stake in the state’s growing film industry.
Besides the local actors who appear on camera, generally as extras, they include the many “invisible people” behind the camera, such as carpenters, electricians and makeup artists.
One of the “invisible people” is Steph Accetta, who, like Mulhall, returned to Rhode Island when the film business took off after passage of the tax-credit bill.
A Cranston native, Accetta has served as production manager on Brotherhood, Evening, 27 Dresses and currently Hachiko: A Dog’s Story. She does cost analyses for filmmakers, making deals with venders, hotels and equipment companies to service the film projects.
Accetta worked at the Rhode Island Film Office from 1990 until, she says, the Bruce Sundlun administration came in and eventually decided that the state couldn’t afford such frills. So she moved to Miami to work in the film business there. She lived in Florida for nearly a decade — and still owns a house there — until the tax credit attracted film business here and brought her back home.
Another behind-the-scenes film worker is Scott Levine, of Providence. Levine worked for more than two decades in the publicity departments of Universal and 20th Century Fox in several cities, including New York, before coming to Rhode Island “before the film boom was under way.”
In 2006, he went to work on Underdog as a unit publicist, overseeing all local and national media relations while the film was in production. Since then, Levine has gone from one movie to the next. Underdog was followed by Dan in Real Life and 27 Dresses in Rhode Island, then Steve Martin’s Pink Panther 2 in Boston and Cameron Diaz’s The Box. Currently he’s back in Rhode Island for The Clique, at the newly opened Kay Studios in North Kingstown.
Levine credits the tax-credit programs here and in Massachusetts for keeping him employed. He points out that although Pink Panther 2 “is set in Thailand, Paris and Rome, except for two weeks in Paris, the rest was shot in Boston. Most of The Box is set in Virginia, but most of it will be filmed in Boston. It’s the lure of the tax incentive.”
But most of the jobs provided by the fledgling film industry have been part-time work for movie extras.
Warwick retirees Angela and Bill Ryding, for example, have found a post-retirement career working as extras, starting with The Last Shot, a movie starring Matthew Broderick and Alec Baldwin that was filmed in Rhode Island four years ago, before the tax credits were enacted.
Since then, they have appeared in four episodes of the Showtime TV series Brotherhood, including a wedding scene that took eight days to shoot. They’ve also appeared in a panic scene in Underdog, the never-screened Waterfront TV pilot and wedding scenes in 27 Dresses and Pink Panther 2, in Boston. “We are professional wedding guests,” Angela Ryding says with a laugh.
As a result of 27 Dresses, her husband has logged enough time in front of the camera to join her in the Screen Actors Guild. The base pay for a member of the Guild is $130 for eight hours. They are paid time-and-a-half for the next two hours, double time for the next six.
Even people who never considered playing a part in the film industry have found themselves caught up in it.
Semia George, of Flowers by Semia, in North Providence, was hired to provide most of the flowers for the many wedding scenes in 27 Dresses after being recommended to the film staff by people in the local bridal industry. Joe Broady, of the Goth-inspired Club Hell, in Providence, rented out his nightclub to the 27 Dresses crew for five days last June, during which “at least 30 carpenters and electricians came in and changed things. They moved our dance podiums, put in a new VIP area, put up new lights. They brought in a truck to pump in air conditioning because our A/C was too noisy.” They even transformed the Richmond Street club’s “pretty disgusting looking alley into a country club scene.”
IN RHODE ISLAND many movie interiors are shot in real places. A seaside house in Newport was used for the filming of Evening; the State House Rotunda served as a principal set for Underdog; a summer house in Jamestown was a primary location for the filming of Dan in Real Life; and the Woonsocket railway station was used this winter for Hachiko, starring Richard Gere.
Finding these venues is where location scouts, such as Colin Walsh of Providence, come in.
From the set of Hachiko, Walsh explained that he’s responsible for not only finding film sites, but also working with local police to organize details for traffic control and finding space along local streets for the army of crew trucks. Walsh’s film credits include Underdog, Brotherhood, Evening, 27 Dresses, Hachiko and Fever Pitch, in Boston. Because the film business here has been “pretty consistent,” he says, he has been able to work steadily on movies. Marisa Bellis, of Bristol, works for the nonprofit American Humane Association on films in which animals are involved. She’s on the set for every scene in which an animal is used, to make sure it is treated well.
Bellis was living in Los Angeles when she came to Rhode Island to oversee the animal handling on Underdog. She quickly fell in love with the state. After Massachusetts and Connecticut passed tax-incentive laws, “I threw all my cards up in the air and said, ‘LA’s not for me. I’m going to carve out a new niche, let me be the New England rep.’ ”
She moved here in October 2006 and bought a house in Bristol.
She says the first six months here were “very scary.”
“It was very slow. I was very nervous. But then it started picking up, and now it’s fantastic. The big joke in my office in Los Angeles is that now that I’ve moved here, Richard Gere is shooting Hachiko in Bristol three blocks from my house.”
Dave Cambria moved his family and his business, Red Herring, from the Boston area to Barrington six years ago to be closer to the action. Red Herring rents lighting equipment and generators to film companies. Cambria, who is also a lighting technician, has four union film electricians on his staff and adds up to 10 more workers during a busy shoot.
“We’re in charge of all the lighting on a set and anything electrical, from hooking up the trailers the stars use to heating the set when it’s cold or air conditioning it when its hot,” he says.
“I’m a textbook example of the power of tax credits.”
Others who have made it behind the scenes in the film business in Rhode Island include John Ryder, of Rumford, who supplies specialty cars and also dresses the sets. For Hachiko, he installed new decor at the location house on High Street in Bristol. “I’ve never worked so much as last year,” says Ryder, who bounced from Brotherhood to Bachelor Number 2 to The Women to The Box to Hachiko. There have been so many films that, he says, “I don’t know where one ends and the next one begins.”
Costume designer Deb Newhall, of Providence, splits her time between New York and Boston on movie sets, although she was the wardrobe supervisor responsible for the “day-to-day continuity and prepping costumes” on 27 Dresses and currently supervises a crew of a half-dozen costume people at a Woonsocket studio for Hachiko.
David Rotondo, of East Greenwich, was caught during an off moment from work on The Box, in Boston, where he is the construction coordinator. His days often run from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. But Rotondo says, “I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve been steadily employed for almost three years. And it looks like I’ll be employed through this year now that Brotherhood has come back” for another season.
Joe Rossi, of Cumberland, is also looking forward to the return of Brotherhood’s third season. He’s a makeup artist who specializes in creating injuries for the camera. With Brotherhood, Rossi can always count on a lot of gunshot wounds.
Rossi and the other local people who are finding a niche in Rhode Island’s version of Hollywood East are banking on the hope that moviemakers continue to find the state attractive for their films — both physically and, especially, financially.
Posted 20 March, 2008 in MA News
By BASHIRAH MUTTALIB
“Be careful what you ask for,” advised Massachusetts Film Office director Nicholas
Paleologos with a smile.
Thanks to the state’s newly renovated film incentives, film production in Massachusetts,
which struggled along at one or two pics per year, has ballooned to an anticipated six or
seven features shooting simultaneously in spring.
Touted as the second-most filmfriendly state after New Mexico, Massachusetts has upped
the incentives ante by allowing filmmakers to take credits as a direct rebate at 90% of
face value (guaranteed); the filmmakers can sell the credits at a market rate or carry them
forward for five years.
In addition, those who shoot half a movie or spend half of a production budget in the state
are eligible for 25% of the total spend. Producers can also obtain a 100% sales tax
exemption on productionrelated items purchased in-state at
the start of pre-production and continuing for 12 months.
Local indie and docu filmmakers also benefit now that digital media projects are eligible,
while the spending threshold has been lowered to $50,000.
“Losing most of ‘The Departed’ to New York and Canada was the catalyst for improving
our film lure,” Paleologos said. “Now our biggest challenge is expanding our crew base.”
Helping to meet that need is an estimated 37% increase in IATSE membership in
response to the state’s increased production schedule.
“New people are coming to the state for jobs, and those that would have left are staying,”
Paleologos added.
Among the productions slated for lensing in Massachusetts are Paramount’s Leonardo
DiCaprio starrer “Shutter Island,” directed by Martin Scorsese and based on the Dennis
Lehane book; Disney’s “The Surrogates,” with Bruce Willis, and “The Proposal”;
Columbia/Sony’s
“Mall Cop”; and New Line’s “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” with Matthew McConaughey.
Bottom line always says it best, and the commonwealth’s film coffers clearly have
benefited from a production boost: Film revenue for 2008 will be an estimated $200
million-plus for 2008 after $125 million for 2007 — and just $6 million in 2005.
Other recent productions filmed in the state include “27 Dresses,” “Gone Baby Gone,”
“The Great Debaters” and “Pink Panther 2.”
Location managers touted their photographic skills last week in the exhibit and catalog
“Concentric Circles: Metro L.A. Revealed.” The event, a collaboration between the
Location Managers Guild of America and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan
Transportation Authority, showcased the otherwise mundane Los Angeles Metro system
and surrounding areas in artistic photos. Location scouts and managers operated in
concentric circles to find their shots.
“Board chairman Orin Kennedy has long held, and the LMGA believes, that since
location professionals are key members of the creative team and often the ‘first eyes’ on
location for a film or television production, presenting the photography of location
managers and scouts as art changes the conversation about the largely unseen and not
well understood work of its members,” said LMGA
president Kayla Thames-Berge.
Proceeds from the event, held at the Venice, Calif.’s, Beady Minces Gallery — which is
also available for film shoots — will help the guild further its mission: raising awareness
of its specialized craft.
Gallery curator Peter Mays presented the LMGA with Art & Living magazine’s “Art to
Life” Award for its contributions to the cultural life of Los Angeles.
Posted 20 March, 2008 in FilmUSA
U.S. Production Incentives Alert
March 20, 2008
Alaska’s new incentive legislation is under active consideration by the Alaska Senate, with final action expected soon. Dama Chasle of the Incentives Office has been testifying before the Alaska senate in support of SB230 by telephone at each session. This will provide a 30% credit for all salaries, a 30% credit for goods and services purchased from an Alaska vendor, and 40% for cast & crew who are Alaska residents.
Colorado’s hoped for incentives program was not approved when it came up for vote yesterday.
Illinois has not reinstated its new program, which expired on 12/31/07. Legislation was approved by the Illinois house, but did not pass the Senate in March. It will be reconsidered in mid-April.
Mississippi has increased its rebate for out-of-state crew from 10% to 20%, non-resident cast are capped at $1 million per hire, and projects are capped at $8 million. Loan-outs will be charged a flat 2%. (This has not yet been passed, but is in conference).
Michigan’s legislature is completing work on the 16 bills that comprise their new incentives package. Approval by the Senate is expected today (Thursday,) with the Governor expected to sign on Monday or Tuesday. The legislation provides for a 40% rebate for all ATL plus Michigan labor; out-of-state crew is 30%. There is a $2 million cap per hire. Goods and services purchased from local vendors get a 30% rebate. Applications, which must be approved prior to the start of production, should be available late next week. (Goods and services are 40%, not 30%).
Rhode Island is considering a bill that will put a $15 million yearly cap on production (there is currently no cap). If passed, the legislation will be retroactive, and apply to any films starting after January 1, 2008, including films already in production.
THE INCENTIVES OFFICE
Please feel free to call us with any question about U.S. Production Incentives. We can: suggest the best places to shoot, prepare and file the required applications, make suggestions to maximize your incentives, ensure that vendors for production insurance, payroll, completion bonds and similar are invoicing properly to capture the credits or rebates, introduce you to tax credit brokers and incentives funding sources, introduce you to 3rd party auditors (if required), and help with just about anything you need relating to incentives.
Jeff Begun — jeff@theincentivesoffice.com
Posted 14 March, 2008 in MA News
New tax credit makes Mass. attractive site for filmmakers
By Gerry Tuoti
GateHouse News Service
Posted Mar 10, 2008 @ 11:18 AM
Taunton —
Acclaimed director Martin Scorsese’s decision to film his latest feature in the city has garnered wide local attention, but the move is just the latest in a Massachusetts movie trend, many industry analysts say.
“Massachusetts is among the top incentive states in the country,” said Christine Peluso, principal at Tax Credits LLC of Piscataway, N.J., a leading national company that works with tax credits in the film industry.
The state’s recently expanded film tax credits are the primary force behind Hollywood’s interest in Massachusetts, she explained.
When the Commonwealth expanded its film tax incentive package last July, “the lid blew off,” said Nick Paleologos, the executive director of the Massachusetts Film Office. Boston benefited early on, but the rest of the state is now starting to catch up.
“When film makers are coming through a second time, they’re discovering there’s a whole state there beyond Boston,” he said, adding that he was very happy Scorsese picked Taunton as a location to film the upcoming feature “Ashecliffe.”
Massachusetts offers diverse array of settings that Paleologos said rival those of any other state.
“If you drew a 30- or 40-mile circle around Boston, or really any point in Massachusetts, there’s beautiful locations and diverse locations,” he said. “There are sea shores, mill towns, urban, rural, suburban.”
He said his office encourages location managers and scouts to take a look at settings all across the state.
Massachusetts is one of several states to recently pass incentives to attract the movie industry.
Several years ago, a large number of production companies began filming extensively outside the United States because countries such as Canada and New Zealand started to offer rebates and tax credits to them.
“$10 to $20 billion a year was being lost to production outside the U.S.,” Peluso said. “We were feeling the economic effects here.”
To capture some of that “runaway production,” some states started to offer similar incentives to bring business back to the United States. Louisiana was among the first.
“Relatively speaking, Massachusetts was not the first, but it was actually early,” Peluso said.
Massachusetts first approved a film tax credit in 2005. That year, before the credits went into effect, one movie filmed in Massachusetts, bringing in about $6 million, Paleologos said. In 2006, the first year the new regulation was in effect, two movies brought $50 million into the state. Last year, eight films brought in $125 million. This spring, a half-dozen features are filming in Massachusetts, including Scorsese’s “Ashecliffe,” which is being shot at Whittenton Mills, Taunton.
“Really what those numbers translate into is jobs, jobs, jobs,” Paleologos said.
Beyond that, cities that host a movie shoot often receive an economic boost.
“They’re eating, drinking, buying stuff,” Peluso explained. “There is an injection of capital.”
Paleologos agrees.
“It’s been quite impressive,” he said. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see that money being spent in Taunton”
Mayor Charles Crowley also predicts that the filming of “Ashecliffe” will pump some money into the city.
“I think local hotels, restaurants and caterers are going to benefit,” he said.
The film, which stars Hollywood heavyweights including Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Kingsley, will also “help put Taunton on the map,” the mayor said.
Crowley downplayed suggestions that Scorsese was drawn to Taunton by the state film tax incentives.
“A lot of people are trying to claim credit for this,” he said. “They’ve been looking quite awhile for this.”
He said the Whittenton Mills complex, which was shown on national TV news coverage of the 2005 Whittenton dam crisis, likely caught someone’s eye. David Murphy, owner of Whittenton Mills, deserves the credit, Crowley said.
State Sen. Marc Pacheco, D-Taunton, who supported expanding the incentives, said the tax credits have had a strong impact on the state.
“To capture a piece of that industry in Massachusetts helps us economically, it helps us culturally, it helps us diversify our base economy and it helps communities like Taunton along the way,” Pacheco said.
Last July, Gov. Deval Patrick and the state Legislature expanded the tax credit. Under the previous law, credits were limited to $7 million per film and applied only to films costing $250,000 or more. The expanded law removed the cap and lowered the $250,000 floor to $50,000, for purposes of both the income tax credit and the sales tax exemption.
“The film tax credit has been one of the Legislature’s most successful methods for motivating the industry to make Massachusetts the backdrop for numerous movies,” state Senate President Therese Murray, D-Plymouth, said recently. “With larger productions waiting in the wings, this modest investment will be a greater enticement for the film industry to choose Massachusetts over other states.”
Peluso put the Bay State into a national perspective.
“What Massachusetts did, this is very typical,” she said. “Something passed. They saw some economic effects, then they expanded and improved it.”
Another factor that makes Massachusetts attractive to film makers is the extensive crew base available in the state, Paleologos said.
“Beyond California and New York … you’d be hard-pressed to find another state with a crew base as talented as we have,” Paleologos said.
He said evidence shows the film tax incentives are giving a boost to the state economy. Over the past 12 months, the IATSE Local 481, the union that represents most film industry workers in Massachusetts, has seen its membership increase 40 percent, he said. Jobs in the industry include set painters, decorators, generator operators, electricians, carpenters, prop designers and others.
There are also signs of long-term investment into the film industry in Massachusetts.
Former Paramount Studios executive David Kirkpatrick, is working to open a film studio in Plymouth. His plan is to have Plymouth Rock Studios up and running in two years.
Many state and local officials have already shown support for the plan.
‘‘There’s a lot of excitement about this project,’’ said Murray, the state Senate president.
Murray, who lives in Plymouth, said state funding is available to help pay for infrastructure improvements, and the studio would rank high on the priority list.
‘‘We need to spend the money where we’ll get the biggest bang for the buck and this would be a pretty good bang,’’ she said.
With the state tax credits, a studio in Plymouth would likely get a lot of work, Paleologos said.
“I think there will certainly be enough interest to keep a state-of-the-art sound stage busy for a long time,” he predicted.
Peluso called the Massachusetts film tax credits one of the most successful incentive packages in the nation. The state did a good job of balancing local economic interests, production concerns and marketability, she explained.
“In the end, it’s got to benefit everyone,” she said.
“What Massachusetts did in 2007 was improve it in production,” Peluso continued. “It is one of the best in the country. They got it right.”
GateHouse News Service contributed to this report.
gtuoti@tauntongazette.com
Posted 9 March, 2008 in MI News
If everything goes as planned, Michigan may soon become one of the main production hubs in the U.S. The reason? A forty percent rebate, no per picture or yearly cap, and (later in the year) a production loan program. There is an additional two percent incentive for shooting in any of 103 Core Communities. The expected effective date is April 1st, with the required Application Form available in 10 days. Anyone needing to start pre-production prior to April 1st should discuss retroactivity with the Michigan Film Office. There is a salary cap of $2 million per person.
While details are not yet final, the following information is accurate as of this writing. Cast and crew need not be Michigan residents to qualify, but they only qualify if Michigan state income taxes are paid. Purchases and rentals must be from a Michigan vendor to qualify, but the vendor may arrange a sub-rental from an out-of-state supplier and still qualify if the required items are not available within the state. Services must be provided by in-state vendors to qualify.
The rebate will be paid in 30 to 60 days, to a maximum of 90 days after all materials have been submitted in good order; the producer will be responsible for providing an appropriate audit. It is NOT necessary to file a state tax return prior to receiving the rebate; however, uncompleted film will not qualify.
The Detroit IATSE reports between 120 and 140 active members with motion picture experience; Michigan IA is on area standards, Maryland rates.
There is one large sound stage, and a 35mm processing lab.
Detroit, on the Canadian border, is the largest city in the state, with a population somewhat under a million. Other cities include Lansing (the State capital), Ann Arbor, Flint, and Grand Rapids, with populations between 100,000 and 200,000. The state is divided into two Peninsulas - the Lower, with a population of just under 10 million, and the Upper, which is as large as Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island combined but has fewer than 330,000 inhabitants. The two peninsulas are connected by a 5-mile suspension bridge; the Upper Peninsula stretches across the top of Wisconsin, and touches Minnesota.
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