NEWS
Posted 8 June, 2008 in MA News
June 5, 2008 - New York Times
By GLENN RIFKIN
Angela Peri was shepherding the more than 200 extras she had sent to the set of a new movie, “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” being filmed in an upscale mall near Boston . So Ms. Peri, who runs a small casting agency, Boston Casting, hardly had a moment to talk about the impact of the new tax credits going to filmmakers in Massachusetts .
“It’s nuts,” she said. After nearly two decades of eking out a living with industrial films, commercials and the rare feature film, her business has doubled in the last year. “We’re working 12 to 15 hour days.”
Since last July, when Gov. Deval L. Patrick signed into law a 25 percent film tax credit, a wave of major film projects has landed in Massachusetts . The legislation was part of a fierce competition among a growing number of states to entice Hollywood to make films within their borders.
In April, both New York and Michigan raised the ante with generous rebate plans, with Michigan raising its tax credit to 42 percent. And in May, California ’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, urged legislators in his state to enhance its tax credit in hopes of keeping Hollywood in Hollywood . Nearly all 50 states have instituted film tax credits in recent years.
Still, the tax credits are not universally supported. A few Massachusetts legislators have recently criticized them, arguing that taxpayers are being fooled by the glamour and that much of the money generated by the films will end up leaving the state in the pockets of wealthy directors and movie stars.
Advocates of the tax credits disagree, of course. They insist that the economic payoff for welcoming big feature films with multimillion dollar budgets is huge, particularly for the small businesses in the places where the movies are being made.
Massachusetts, with its aggressive push to lure film projects, is already seeing a big payback. According to Nick Paleologos, executive director of the Massachusetts Film Office in Boston , the tax credit has breathed life into a once-moribund local industry.
Since 2006, when a more limited tax credit was first offered, Massachusetts has realized $545 million in direct new film-based revenue compared with just $6 million the year before the tax credit was approved, according to the state’s Department of Revenue.
“In January and February last year, hotels in Boston were empty,” Mr. Paleologos said. “This year they were full. The movie company comes in and takes 200 rooms for two months. The jobs connected to those rooms has a ripple effect. Instead of collecting unemployment, workers are collecting paychecks and paying state income taxes. They go out and spend that money and other businesses make money and pay more taxes.”
In 2005, for example, just one feature film was made in the state and only two the next year. In 2007, with the new tax credit, the number jumped to eight, and this year, there are already seven being made before July with five in the wings.
Since January, multiple productions were shooting simultaneously in and around the Boston area. Besides “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” starring the comic actor Kevin James, Martin Scorsese was directing Leonardo DiCaprio in “Ashecliffe”; Ricky Gervais, the British comic actor, was directing and starring in his first feature film, “This Side of the Truth,” on the streets of Lowell. Sandra Bullock was filming “The Proposal” in Rockport and Gloucester ; and Matthew McConaughey was filming “The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” in Boston . Because of the weak dollar, foreign filmmakers are also heading to Massachusetts to take advantage of what could amount to a 50 cent rebate on every dollar spent.
Hotels, restaurants and bars are reaping the economic rewards along with small businesses that provide film equipment, production crews, security, construction, catering, hairstyling, makeup and extras. The local film union has seen membership rise by nearly 50 percent and wages double as the film work pours in. The Massachusetts Department of Labor is sponsoring programs to refine the skills of trades people for film work because the demand for labor is so high.
“We chose Massachusetts due to the rebate,” said Lynda Obst, producer of “This Side of the Truth.” Ms. Obst said the tax credit will save the production more than $3 million, which is a huge advantage for a film with an $18 million budget.
The city of Lowell , 45 minutes northwest of Boston , has welcomed Mr. Gervais and his film crew with open arms. The former mill town and birthplace of Jack Kerouac is reaping an estimated $2 million from the production for the local economy.
Sean Harmon, owner of Harmon’s Paint and Wallpaper, said he has done about $20,000 in business with the film production already. “This is all found business,” Mr. Harmon said. “It’s been a boon to the whole city.”
With a large cast and crew descending on the city for more than two months of shooting, local restaurants, hotels, laundries, bars and other businesses are cashing in. “All these small businesses are getting the traffic of 160 crew members with a per-diem to spend,” Ms. Obst said.
Mr. Gervais, who created and starred in the original British version of “The Office” and later “Extras,” said he looked at nearly a dozen communities in New England before settling on Lowell . “I do like the idea that this generates income for small businesses,” he said. “It’s important to put something back. And we end up with an extra $3 million doing it here rather than New York or elsewhere.”
In fact, it was a coalition of small business owners like Ms. Peri that persuaded the commonwealth to pass the aggressive tax credit. In late 2004, the group, lead by Joe Maiella, senior vice president of CrewStar, a small firm that offers payroll services and other crew-related services for film productions, made the case that Massachusetts was missing a lucrative opportunity.
With its pristine shoreline, diverse geographies, and historic cities and towns, the state had natural appeal. Tourism is a major economic driver, and a starring role in a feature film means millions of dollars worth of free advertising for the state.
“ Massachusetts was not even on the radar map in attracting this level of film production,” Mr. Maiella said. “We recognized that we had to coalesce the industry here to achieve a number of initiatives. We used models from other states, particularly Louisiana , to draft a bill that we knew would work.”
The initial bill put a $7 million limit on the tax credit, which effectively kept big film projects away. Under the coalition’s prodding, Governor Patrick removed the cap last July, increased the credit to 25 percent from 20 percent and offered motion picture producers flexibility in how they took advantage of the credit. “Some states give you credit only below the line, with all sorts of restrictions and permutations,” Mr. Paleologos said. “Here, you know what your credit is worth.”
The embarrassment of riches comes with a price. The local support businesses are scrambling to keep up with demand. Production crews are snapped up and kept busy for months, forcing new productions to import crews from Los Angeles or New York .
“You have to be able to provide the infrastructure,” Mr. Paleologos said. “Studios want to hire locally and avoid paying airfare and hotels and per-diems for outside crews.”
Thus far, Massachusetts has not lost a motion picture project for lack of support crews but it is in a race to keep pace. In addition to the state Labor Department’s retraining efforts, the state is promoting education programs tied to the numerous local colleges and universities to train students in the film production business. Many actors and production people who left the state are returning.
In addition, three groups of private investors are seeking to spend up to $400 million to build state of the art soundstages in Plymouth , Weymouth or Boston that will not only create thousands of new jobs but make production in Massachusetts even more viable.
With all that, those in the local film community are well aware of the heated battle to take some of the work away.
“It’s about the money,” Ms. Peri acknowledges. “If they can get 42 percent rebate in Michigan , they’ll just pack up and find a way to make Michigan look like Paris .”
Posted 26 April, 2008 in MA News
Producer Dana Brunetti has acknowledged that he and fellow producer
Kevin Spacey had originally planned to film most of his gambling movie
21 in Toronto or Chicago until he was lured to Massachusetts by a
$5-million tax credit. Brunetti told Bloomberg News that the other
incentives were significantly less attractive and that Boston offered
a better setting since the true story concerned a group of MIT card
sharks. Nevertheless, the tax credits that the filmmakers received
have sparked political debate over the role of government in
supporting private businesses. “There’s something obscene about giving
Hollywood producers, with all their money, a tax break,” Republican
state Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei told the news service. And
Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation in
Boston, said, “We’re not getting sufficient payback of this as an
investment.” Bloomberg reported that in the past two years the state
has contributed $138 million to 88 film ventures and generated $544
million in wages and other production spending. Nicholas Paleologos,
head of the Massachusetts Film Office observed that that amount
doesn’t include such things as additional wages for workers at hotels
serving film crews.
Posted 22 March, 2008 in MA News
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 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 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
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