Posted 20 September, 2009 in MI News
Granholm says lawmakers to pass budget next month
MARK HORNBECK
Detroit News Lansing Bureau
Lansing — Gov. Jennifer Granholm predicted today lawmakers will pass a budget next month and avoid an Oct. 1 state government shutdown despite “tempers flaring” in budget talks.
She also said she does not want to “gut” the state’s film incentive program and indicated revenue increases are likely needed to avert dangerous budget cuts.
“I believe there has to be a blend of solutions,” said Granholm, who, according to sources, has proposed revenue increases and tax credit savings of about $685 million to help balance a budget for next year that is $2.8 billion out of whack.
“There will be more significant cuts. But I don’t want to cut so deeply it puts Michigan citizens in danger.”
Granholm and legislative leaders have been huddling behind closed doors for months trying to reach an agreement on the fiscal year 2010 budget, which takes effect in October.
A growing chorus of observers is saying the Republican-controlled Senate, the Democrat-dominated House and the Democratic governor are so far apart that the likelihood of a government shutdown is increasing. State government came to halt for a few hours in 2007 over a budget impasse.
“I think we will get an agreement without a shutdown,” Granholm said, but added: “Tempers are flaring behind the scenes.”
Among proposals made by Granholm is a slight reduction in the nation’s highest 42 percent tax break for film production. The governor did not back off that plan today, but said she doesn’t favor deep cuts or elimination of the controversial credit.
“I still want Michigan to be the most attractive state for the film industry,” Granholm said.
A film trade group rallied at the Capitol today and argued against proposals that would reduce or cap tax incentives for film companies.
The Michigan Production Alliance was among the groups lobbying to try and prevent possible budget cuts.
Critics say the film credit costs the state more than it is worth and proposals have been introduced to scale back the program.
mhornbeck@detnews.com”>mhornbeck@detnews.com (313) 222-2470 The Associated Press contributed.
Posted 20 September, 2009 in CA News
State film tax credit keeps Disney film local
August 10, 2009 | 7:14 pm
California’s first new film tax credit program has been panned by some filmmakers as too little too late, but it’s already helping to spur at least some local production.
A low-budget Walt Disney Pictures comedy, “You Again,” is the first studio feature to shoot locally after qualifying for the film credit.
The comedy, starring Sigourney Weaver, Kristen Bell and Jamie Lee Curtis, began seven weeks of filming last week in West Los Angeles. The production also will film on location in Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Monrovia, Chatsworth and Pasadena.
“You Again” is among 25 productions that have so far received credit qualification certificates from the California Film Commission. (Another project on the list, a made-for-TV movie called “Elevator Girl,” began filming in Los Angeles in late July.)
Scheduled for release in 2010, “You Again” received a commitment for a tax credit totaling about $3 million. That’s a significant savings for a movie with budget of less than $20 million.
“When you get a tax credit that equals $3 million, that’s huge for a lower-budget movie,” said Mario Iscovich, the movie’s executive producer. “If it wasn’t for this tax credit, this movie had a great chance to made somewhere else. This was the sort of movie that could have easily shot in New York or Boston.”
Although the tax credits can’t be used until 2011, the film commission recently began issuing tax credit certificates and so far has issued commitments totaling $67 million. The state has authorized a total of $500 million in film tax credits through 2014.
The state program offers a 20% to 25% tax credit on qualified production expenses and excludes movies that cost more than $75 million.
It’s too early to say whether they will do much to reverse the outflow of production that has pounded Southern California’s entertainment economy.
But Amy Lemisch, director of the California Film Commission, says movies like “You Again,” which employ more than 100 crew members (excluding extras), are a welcome boost to the local economy. “These are shows that were absolutely set to shoot elsewhere and now they are filming here. It’s really having an effect,” Lemisch said.
Iscovich added: “I’m just so happy we’re staying here. The people get to earn a living here in California and they can pay their taxes in the state. Lord knows California needs that.”
– Richard Verrier
Posted 19 September, 2009 in FilmUSA
Citing irregularities in the film incentive program, Chester Culver, Governor of Iowa, temporarily suspended approval of new applications or issuance of tax credit certificates yesterday evening. Mike Tramontina, Director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development (DED), resigned. Tom Wheeler, Director of the Film Office, has been put on administrative leave.
Posted 13 September, 2009 in IA News
L.A. film company relocates to Bluffs
By Kim Bousquet
WORLD-HERALD NEWS SERVICE
COUNCIL BLUFFS — An 18-year-old film company headquartered in Los Angeles has relocated to Council Bluffs.
Steve Lustgarten, a native of Omaha and the president of the film distribution and production company LEO Films, was up front about why the company moved.
“The Iowa tax credits attracted me,” Lustgarten said.
In May 2007, Iowa began offering filmmakers financial incentives to produce their projects in Iowa. The state offers transferable income tax credits valued up to 50 percent of the total qualified spending in Iowa.
Bills that would have given similar incentives to moviemakers in Nebraska have been introduced in the State Legislature, but none has passed yet.
Iowa instituted a number of changes this year to try to make the state an even more attractive location. Under the original program terms, no pay to the director, principal producer or principal talent was eligible toward the total qualified spending in Iowa — even if those people were Iowans. Now, portions of pay to the director, principal producer or principal talent are eligible if the project’s total spending meets guidelines.
The incentives seem to be working. According to the Iowa Film Office Web site, just two movies were filmed in 2006. Since 2007, fourteen films have been made or shot scenes in Iowa.
On the list was Polynation Pictures LLC’s “The Scientist,” which had scenes shot in Council Bluffs in October 2008. Like LEO Films, Polynation, formerly of Minnesota and owned by Omaha native Wendy Weiner and writer-director-producer Zach LeBeau, moved its home base to Iowa because of state tax incentives.
“The legislation helps attract film companies,” said Bob Mundt, president and CEO of the Council Bluffs Area Chamber of Commerce. “But we’d also like to think our beautiful city, convenient location and affordability make Council Bluffs an ideal place to make a movie. We’d love to do more.”
More films have been shot in the area since “The Scientist” and have yet to be added to the film office’s list. In July, Reel Entertainment stayed in Council Bluffs for its work on a documentary about RAGBRAI, the popular annual bike ride across Iowa.
According to the Convention and Visitors Bureau, two other production companies are on the books to shoot here, not including LEO Films. A horror comedy is being filmed in the area, and Ten/Four Pictures is filming the dark romantic comedy “Lucky” in town.
The films pump money into the local economy.
“We love having movies filmed in Council Bluffs because the crew stays in our area hotel rooms. Sometimes film crews need office space, extra actors, and the crews certainly need food, fuel and entertainment in the off-hours. All those expenses mean a direct economic impact of over $150,000. Overall that means nearly a half-million dollar impact in indirect benefit for Council Bluffs,” said Josee Beier, director of convention sales for the bureau.
Lustgarten and LEO Films have already relocated to the area, though no offices are set up. The plan is to begin shooting the feature-length thriller “My Own Blood,” written, directed and produced by Lustgarten, this month. Lustgarten expects filming to take three to four weeks.
Still in the planning stages, the scenes will be shot mostly around the Bluffs, using locations like houses, apartments and restaurants as backdrops for scenes. For some scenes, though, shooting may be done in Des Moines.
The cast and crew will be mostly local hires, as Lustgarten brought no one along with him in the film company’s move. He said the cast will be between 12 and 15 people, with about 10 to 20 extras. The crew will be about 20 people.
“No one is from L.A.,” Lustgarten said. “I’m trying to source it all locally.”
Lustgarten got his start in film during the indie film movement’s early days. “American Taboo,” his portrayal of a man obsessed with his teenage neighbor, won a Student Academy Award in 1983, beating out Spike Lee’s “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.”
He moved to L.A. and worked on the creative side of film making before switching over to the business side. He started LEO Films in the fall of 1991, which has developed 80 feature films.
An eclectic film roster reflects the company’s aim to provide a broad base for independently produced films no matter what their subject matter and audience. Some of the company’s 2009 releases include “Flesh Suitcase,” a film about drug mules; “Eye,” a cat-and-mouse thriller about a female judge who has discovered her daughter has been kidnapped; and “Space Zombies,” a film about the living dead from outer space who come to Earth.
With “My Own Blood,” Lustgarten has gotten back into the creative side of filmmaking. It will be the sixth film he has written, directed and produced.
Lustgarten said he hopes to stay in the area and produce more films.
“As long as we can make it work, we’ll do quite a bit of films,” Lustgarten said.
Posted 13 September, 2009 in MD News
Baltimore Museum of Industry disconnects ‘The Wire’
Thursday’s event includes a discussion of the future of filmmaking in the area and appearances by several cast members
By Chris Kaltenbach | chris.kaltenbach@baltsun.com
Baltimore Sun reporter
July 29, 2009
The last shirt Stringer Bell ever wore. Detective Jimmy McNulty’s gun. Avon Barksdale’s prison jumpsuit.
For more than a year, those and about 150 other pieces of “The Wire,” the extended HBO morality play that spent five seasons exploring Charm City’s meaner streets and the people forced to live off them, have been on display at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. But just as the HBO show ended in March 2008, the BMI exhibit has reached the end of its run.
What better excuse for a party?
“Disconnecting The Wire…What’s Next?” begins at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the museum, 1415 Key Hwy. There will be food and drink, as well as a discussion of the future of filmmaking in the area — state and local officials fear the General Assembly’s reluctance to approve tax credits and other incentives could severely hurt the chances of attracting major film and TV projects. Several cast members are supposed to show up, including Jermaine Crawford (Dukie), Andre Royo (Bubbles), Anwan Glover (Slim Charles) and Sonja Sohn (Detective Kima Greggs). There will also be a silent auction of some of The Wire memorabilia on display, as well as a host of other items.
All of which means Thursday is the last day museum visitors will be able to stare at the “blood”-stained shirt Stringer Bell was wearing when he met his grisly end, or watch a film about the show and its economic impact on the region, or stare at pictures of some two-dozen cast members (many of them local). After today, the blueprints for the mayor’s office set will be taken off display, as will the union-made Wire jackets worn by the cast and crew and the fake “The Wire” newspaper, complete with Baltimore Sun logo.
“This has been a very popular exhibit, it certainly added to our attendance,” says Ronald H. Woodward, the BMI’s executive director. “We’ve regularly had people who have come here just for this, and attendance picked up when word got out that it was ending.”
Some of the items will be sold at auction tonight, including Stringer Bell’s final costume (as worn by actor Idris Elba), while others will be returned to the private collectors who lent them. Most of the photographs will go into the museum’s archives. A TV camera, pointed for now at the desk once occupied by Police Commissioner Ervin Burrell (Frankie Faison), will be returned to the Panavision headquarters. “It’s my job to drive that back to New York,” Woodward laments. It may seem strange, seeing a display about a 21st-century TV series in a museum devoted to such relics of Baltimore’s industrial past as a 102-year-old tugboat and a massive crane used in ship construction. But Woodward says the “Wire” exhibit represents a key part of the museum’s mission. “It’s important that the museum isn’t a mausoleum of dead businesses,” he says. “We want to be sure that we talk about things that are still active, still here in Baltimore.”
A subtext of Thursday’s celebration, however, will be the uncertain future of Maryland’s film industry. Many other states offer more lucrative economic incentives to production companies. Since “The Wire” stopped filming in Baltimore in 2007, the area has attracted few major projects, despite a core of technicians and other film personnel that got their start on movies made by local boys Barry Levinson and John Waters.
“A lot of people worked very hard for more than two decades to build a crew base and infrastructure that could support a viable film community in our state,” says “The Wire” creator David Simon, a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun. “That it has all come to naught in the last few years, with the governor and legislature unable to keep pace with most other competing states in creating incentives for film work, is simply tragic.”
Debbie Donaldson Dorsey, director of the Baltimore Film Office, says “The Wire” hired an average of nearly 4,700 local cast and crew members during each of its six seasons, and spent a total of more than $96 million. It also accounted for business with an average of 735 vendors and contractors each season. “We’re definitely getting fewer projects now, because of the lack of an incentive program,” Dorsey says, noting that the negative effect is not just economic. From Waters’ “Pink Flamingos” and Levinson’s “Diner” to “The Wire” and Simon’s previous series, NBC’s “Homicide: Life On the Street,” Baltimoreans have come to relish their city’s reputation as the working-man’s Hollywood.
“People love to watch their city and state on film,” she says. “I was just in Fells Point today, and people are still getting their picture taken in front of the Homicide plaque.” Adds Jack Gerbes, head of the Maryland Film Office, “It’s good for tourism, too. People are still heading down to Berlin, on the Eastern Shore, where ‘Runaway Bride’ was shot.”
In that sense, says Simon, he hopes this final party for “The Wire” will be just the end of one project, not of an era.
“After so much work over so many years creating a film industry, and so many millions of dollars funneled into Maryland’s economy,” he says, “it’s hard to think that it will soon only exist as, well, a museum piece.”
More info: Disconnecting The Wire…What’s Next? At the Baltimore Museum of Industry, 1415 Key Hwy., from 5:30-9:30 p.m. Thursday. Tickets are $45 at the door, $40 in advance, $35 for BMI members and film industry union and guild members. Information: 410-727-4808. ext. 105, or thebmi.org.
Posted 13 September, 2009 in FilmUSA
The money shot
Aug 13th 2009
From The Economist print edition
WITH its deserts and its slight air of decay, New Mexico is a good place to shoot a post-apocalyptic action film. But the state’s natural charms alone would probably not have been enough to lure the makers of “The Book of Eli”. Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove, who are producing the Warner Bros film, say they were particularly enticed by New Mexico’s generous production subsidies and interest-free loans.
All but seven of America’s 50 states now offer incentives to lure filmmakers. Some states refund a portion of in-state production costs, which may include actors’ salaries. Others issue rebates against state taxes that can be sold to local residents. The club is growing quickly. California, which resisted subsidies for years, recently approved its first clutch of recipients. Kentucky is considering its first application. With banks and hedge funds virtually out of the game, state governments are now the most important external source of funding in the film business.
Public largesse has led to some odd artistic decisions. “Gran Torino”, a story that originally revolved around Minnesota’s distinctive community of Hmong immigrants, was transplanted to Michigan to take advantage of that state’s subsidies, which can amount to 42% of production costs. The forthcoming “Battle: Los Angeles” will be filmed mostly in Baton Rouge, Louisiana—a reversal of the tradition by which southern California stands in for everywhere else.
Studies commissioned by the states tend to show a healthy return on investment. Filmmakers have certainly learned to follow the money: California’s share of big-studio productions dropped from two-thirds in 2003 to less than one-third in 2008 as its politicians dithered over subsidies. It is also likely that subsidies have helped America compete with Europe and Canada, although the weak dollar has probably done more to restrain what is known as “flyaway production”.
The continuing bidding war is likely to result in diminished returns for the states. Michigan’s subsidies, once considered improbably lavish, may soon be matched by Washington, DC. Alaska has approved a 44% rebate, although production companies must film in rural areas during the state’s gruelling winter to qualify for the full sum. Whatever the benefit to the states, however, the subsidies are becoming ever more important to Hollywood.
But as state budgets tighten, a backlash is gathering. This summer Indiana and Wisconsin reduced their rebates. A bill to do the same is before the Michigan legislature. In the Midwest the surge in foreclosures and the collapse of traditional industries has hardened hearts. Jud Gilbert, a Michigan state senator who opposes film subsidies, points out that if he could offer a 42% rebate on car production, that industry would not be in crisis.
Yet a broad retreat from film subsidies is unlikely. Some of the first places to offer rebates, such as New Mexico and Louisiana, now have impressive sound stages and a deep pool of production workers. States that want to compete with them will have to be extremely generous. And big studios and independent outfits are sharply trimming their film output in response to the credit crunch and a faltering DVD market. As the supply of work shrinks, the squabbling will only intensify.
Posted 1 September, 2009 in TN News
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2009/sep/01/dave-porfini-promotes-chattanooga-as-ideal/?entertainmentlifeentertainment
