NEWS
Posted 29 June, 2008 in NM News
New studios call for more action in the area
By PETER DEBRUGE
Boasting a major airport, Hollywood-caliber studio facilities and a full third of New Mexico’s 2.5 million
residents, the Albuquerque area seems like the natural hub for the state’s filmmaking operations.
But plans are under way that could shift a significant amount of production to the Santa Fe area, widely
recognized as the creative culture center of the Southwest. In addition to the many artists and musicians
represented there, the capital (with its relatively modest 80,000 population) is home to nearly half the state’s
crew base. In the past, those pros have had to commute to Albuquerque (a 45-minute drive) or far-flung
outdoor locations like Ghost Ranch or White Sands for work, with gas and lodging eating into production
budgets.
That may change thanks to a number of major initiatives in the works. Earlier this month, local government
gave the Hool family, established players in the Mexican and independent film scene, the greenlight to
proceed with building Santa Fe Studios, their proposed 600,000-square-foot, six-stage facility just south of
the city.
In keeping with the style of most Santa Fe architecture, the Hools looked to indigenous traditions as they
planned their eco-conscious campus. “It turns out the Anasazi design principles map one-to-one with the
lead green principles: orientation of buildings on a north-south axis, take advantage of shade for the summer
and passive heating for winter, capture rainwater, things like that,” explains Jason Hool, who left a job
working with Guy Hands at Terra Firma to assist his father, producer Lance Hool, with the project.
By the time Santa Fe Studios’ projected late-2009 completion date rolls around, Angelenos should be able to
fly directly into Santa Fe with the same 90-minute terminal-to-terminal convenience currently available
between the LAX and ABQ airports.
“American Airlines and Delta are in the process of getting clearance from the FAA,” claims Eric Witt, head
of Gov. Bill Richardson’s media arts development initiative. “They’re looking to direct 70- to 100-seat
passenger jets from L.A., Denver and Dallas.”
To make things even more accessible, construction is already under way on a high-speed “Rail Runner”
train between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. At this rate, crews could be commuting effortlessly between the
two cities by the end of the year
Posted 29 June, 2008 in NM News
6/27/08 9:59 AM
A sampling of film and TV shoots in the state
By VARIETY STAFF
The last fiscal year brought $632 million in film-related revenue to New Mexico. Here is a sampling of the
recent productions to shoot in the state:
FILM
Appaloosa (New Line)
Beer For My Horses (independent)
Brothers (Relativity)
The Burning Plain (independent)
The Dark Country (independent)
Easier With Practice (independent)
Felon (Stage 6)
Five Dollars a Day (ThinkFilm)
Game (Lionsgate)
Hamlet 2 (Focus)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Paramount)
Legion (Screen Gems)
Love Ranch (Capitol Films)
Observe & Report (Warner Bros.)
The Spirit (Lionsgate)
Spoken Word (Luminaria)
Swing Vote (Touchstone)
Terminator: Salvation (Warner Bros.)
To Live & Die (MGM)
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (DreamWorks)
The Warboys (independent)
Year One (Sony)
TV
Breaking Bad (AMC)
Crash (pilot) (Starz)
In Plain Sight (USA Networks)
Sex & Lies in Sin City (Lifetime)
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (pilot) (Fox)
Wildfire (ABC Family)
Posted 29 June, 2008 in NM News
6/27/08
Stages broaden New Mexico’s filming prospects
By THOMAS MCLEAN
The gritty urban tales that Will Eisner brought to life in “The Spirit” comicbooks of the 1940s are a world
removed from the desert charm and sweeping vistas of Albuquerque, N.M.
But technology brings even the strangest bedfellows together, as shown by Albuquerque Studios’ state-of-
the-art soundstages, which made it possible for the city to attract Frank Miller’s effects-heavy adaptation of
“The Spirit.”
Producer Deborah Del Prete had previously filmed in New Mexico and liked working there, but it took the
kind of technical facilities that could handle the greenscreen-heavy virtual shoot planned for “The Spirit” to
bring her back. “Without them having built that studio, they couldn’t have attracted a movie like ours and a
lot of the other movies that have come in after us,” she says.
Jeremy Hariton, senior VP of the facility, says that was a major motivation for building the studio, which
opened in June 2007 and welcomed “The Spirit” as its first feature film production. “Rather than being a
location destination, we’re able to attract films like ‘The Spirit’ that aren’t here to shoot the vistas,” he says.
Like the film adaptations of Miller’s own comics in “Sin City” and “300,” “The Spirit” is a cutting-edge
virtual movie that needed the kind of large space and technical requirements only a studio can provide.
A visit to the set last November revealed the production spread across the studio’s two largest stages, a
space totaling 48,000 square feet, which had been divided into quadrants for shooting. Each section featured
a small chunk of physical set, such as a truck, a patch of land or the side of a building, behind which either
a greenscreen or blackscreen was draped from ceiling to floor.
The setup enabled Miller to direct a shot in which Gabriel Macht, who plays the Spirit, flips up from one
level of a fire escape to another guided by wires that would later be painted out digitally. Later the same
day, Miller moved across the stage to handle another shot, in which the masked Macht delivers a solid right
cross to the jaw of Samuel L. Jackson’s Octopus.
Supporting the production were comfortable, modern production offices that housed props, costumes and an
art department covered in sketches and drawings, some by Miller himself, of Central City and its denizens.
Having such facilities bolsters the state’s contention that its financial incentives are paying off. While “The
Spirit” is completing more than 1,800 visual effects shots in Santa Monica and San Francisco, Albuquerque
Studios is hardly standing empty: “Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins” has since swooped in to
occupy all six of the facility’s existing stages, and two additional 18,000-square-foot buildings are set to
accommodate season two of AMC’s “Breaking Bad.”
“We’ve pretty much rented the whole place, so it’s almost like our own little studio,” says “Terminator”
location manager Michael J. Burmeister.
Unlike “The Spirit,” the production is doing nearly half its shooting on exteriors, most of them within a one-
hour driving radius of Albuquerque Studios. The team is also building a number of sets on raw land
adjacent to the facility, using the space almost like a backlot.
“They start out in the desert, like Palmdale or Lancaster, so we’re able to take advantage of the New Mexico
landscape, then try to match some things in L.A.,” Burmeister says. “If you’re trying to do Times Square, it’s
a little more challenging.” Unless, of course, you do it on greenscreen.
Read the full article at:
Posted 29 September, 2007 in NM News
Facilities fuel New Mexico production boom
By Wolf Schneider
Sept 18, 2007
When Paul Haggis began searching for locations to shoot his intense Army drama “In the Valley of Elah,” he knew he wanted a place in the South with a 1960s-style motel adjacent to a diner and an Army base nearby — and, of course, in a state with generous tax incentives. Although he had booked scouting trips to New Mexico, Louisiana and South Carolina, he landed first in Albuquerque and quickly discovered he’d found the perfect spot to begin production.
“Within an hour and a half, I’d locked in four locations! Not found them — I mean, locked them,” Haggis says. “I said, ‘It’s great. It’s perfect. Move on!’ So that was just remarkable. I really found a terrific variety of architecture where I thought I’d just find unending adobe.”
The Oscar-winning writer-director-producer isn’t the only filmmaker who’s been lured to the Land of Enchantment recently. Since Gov. Bill Richardson, now a presidential candidate, pushed through an aggressive package of tax rebates and no-interest loans in 2002, New Mexico has become one of the top five filmmaking destinations in the U.S. More than 80 feature film and television projects have been made in the state since then, and annual direct expenditures from film and television production have skyrocketed from $3 million in 2002 to $159 million in 2007. This year alone, the state has attracted more than 30 feature films and television projects.
And it looks as though Hollywood is here to stay. Infrastructure is now solidifying in this artists’ mecca of high chaparral and low population density, striated by the southernmost Rocky Mountains. The crew base has deepened to almost 1,500 — or four to five crews — with homegrown training programs at schools like the University of New Mexico cranking out a new generation. Sustainability is the strategy now, with three seminal events coalescing in the last year.
First, Albuquerque Studios, a $74 million 28-acre site, opened its first six soundstages in April and is already fully booked up.
Second, Sony Pictures Imageworks broke ground on a 100,000-square-foot satellite facility at Albuquerque Studios. It’ll open in June 2008 with 100 jobs in animation, visual effects and digital media, eventually growing to 300.
Third, the “sunset” clause on the 25% tax rebate was removed, so that rebate is now permanently in place. What’s more, the loan fund has been increased so it now holds about $280 million that can be outstanding at anytime — and the state is about to receive its first profits on the loan program from Lionsgate, which advanced $500,000 against the profits of 2006’s “Employee of the Month” and ABC Family’s “Wildfire,” according to state investment council topper Greg Kulka.
Entertainment attorney Peter Dekom helped structure the up-to-$15 million loans that protect the state’s principal since the qualifications include a solid guarantor, distribution in place and the hiring of New Mexico residents for 60% of the below-the-line crew payroll. Mind you, Dekom doesn’t actually read any of the 50 to 100 scripts a year he puts into serious evaluation; his forte is assessing deal elements — which is why the political comedy “Swing Vote” obtained a loan with just foreign distribution in place, plus a personal guarantee from star Kevin Costner, who’s also producing it with Jim Wilson. In midproduction now, the picture just got a domestic deal with Disney.
“Kevin’s an amazing guy,” comments Dekom. “Kevin is in it so deeply. It’s his money that guaranteed the letter of credit that guarantees us. And I think he’s going to make a lot of money on it.”
In return, Costner says, “I have several films that feel like they could work here. I feel like there is a great crew base here.”
“Swing Vote” writer-director Joshua Michael Stern explains of his film: “It’s about the presidential election coming down to one vote, and it had to come from a swing state — a state that was sort of independent, that was a free-spirited, free-thinking kind of place. So I set the script in New Mexico.” Stern imagined his setting to be “a little desert town like in (1971’s) ‘The Last Picture Show.’”
Producer Wilson found that sleepy town in Belen — complete with an area they could use as a backlot. Wilson found everything else in the script here, too. “It was like, I need some stately buildings for the capitol — that’s in Santa Fe,” he recounts. “I need large warehouses. I need chicken factories. I need something that looks like Vermont for Dennis Hopper’s character’s palatial house — we found a big A-frame home in the Sandia Mountains. I need Santa Barbara for where Kelsey Grammer, (who plays) the incumbent president, can live — that’s in Corrales.”
Wilson knew New Mexico, having teamed with Costner on 1994’s “Wyatt Earp.” “The industry has come a long way here in the last 10 years. There’s an infrastructure now that’s capable of handling numerous movies,” he observes.
Albuquerque, with a population of half a million, is New Mexico’s biggest production center — though Santa Fe and other points north attract the atmospheric Westerns, like New Line Cinema’s “Appaloosa,” directed by and starring Ed Harris. “That area seemed right for what we were looking for. It was the dramatic quality of the landscape, I guess you’d say — the water, the cliffs, the sky, the clouds,” says Harris, who also considered — then nixed — Canada, Texas and Arizona, because “the great rebate situation is difficult to pass up.”
The master strategist behind those 25% tax rebates (which are true tax rebates on New Mexico spends, not tax credits as so many other states offer), and indeed the whole production boom, is Eric Witt, Gov. Richardson’s director of media arts and entertainment development. Since Richardson took office in 2003, film production has brought the state $409 million in direct expenditures. “The key now is our reputation and the relationships we develop, and because of that, companies like Sony Imageworks are relocating on a permanent basis here as opposed to sending individual productions,” evaluates the savvy Witt, who was vp finance at Dino De Laurentiis Communications before donning his cowboy boots.
“Yes, we are a case study in a general economic development sense,” allows Witt. “But the film business doesn’t always make sense for every state.” Hosting film and television productions requires more than just varied locations and, in the case of New Mexico, 300 days a year of sunshine, Witt elaborates: “You have to design your program in way that makes economic sense for your state, and that largely depends on your tax structure and your job base. Do you have crew? The reason we are able to give a 25% tax rebate and still make money — we are one of, if not the only state that makes money on its rebate program — is because of our gross receipts tax and personal income tax and corporate income tax.”
“States that don’t have that tax structure — like Nevada or Texas — can’t just take New Mexico’s model and co-op it lock, stock and barrel,” he continues.
With 15 projects either here or coming, New Mexico is now the busiest ever. Two futuristic films both in the $50 million range are headquartering at Albuquerque Studios: Lakeshore Entertainment’s “Game,” in which a fictional prison institutes a process whereby convicts can commute their sentences by participating in a deadly game, and Lionsgate’s “The Spirit.” Other projects include Paramount Pictures’ latest installment of the “Indiana Jones” franchise, USA Network’s drama series “In Plain Sight” and AMC’s crime series “Breaking Bad.” “The Burrowers,” a sci-fi thriller about underground creatures who prey on the inhabitants of a 19th century Western town, just wrapped, as did the Cuba Gooding Jr. action thriller “Linewatch,” which was promptly picked up by Sony Pictures Entertainment, and there’s talk about a Taylor Hackford movie coming.
State film commissioner Lisa Strout observes, “To have the infrastructure with a major company like Sony here on the ground has already spurred other people to want to be here too in a sort of media cluster.”
“We’re scouting a lot these days for Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan on the western face of the Sandia Mountains and the Florida Mountains near Deming,” Strout adds.
Anticipating more activity, producer Lance Hool is in advanced talks to open a soundstage complex in Santa Fe County called Santa Fe Studios, and Lionsgate has a soundstage in the planning for north of Albuquerque. Says Lionsgate executive vp Mark Manuel, “We are looking at numerous options for our film studio. If anything, we have seen the volume of production in New Mexico pick up dramatically over the past few months.”
It’s enough to make Dekom punningly promise, “You’ll never get a chile reception in Tamalewood!” And to drive it home with “We can keep our crews busy all the time — we are a hot tamale.”
Posted 29 September, 2007 in NM News
New Mexico heating up
Albuquerque Studios phase one completion slated early ‘07
Some studios look better on the architectural drawing board. Just ask Hal Katersky, chairman and chief financial officer of Pacifica Ventures, which will own and operate New Mexico’s Albuquerque Studios, a new facility skedded for phase one completion early next year.”There are lots of announcements, but few materialize,” said Katersky, whose Pacifica Ventures also owns and operates Culver Studios.
Albuquerque Studios, originally planned for the city’s historic railyard, ran into environmental issues and difficulties surrounding the demolition of buildings on the site.
“It was beautiful, but costly,” said Nick Smerigan, VP of Albuquerque Studios.
According to Katersky, support from New Mexico’s state and city government, in addition to its unique incentives, allowed the project to remain viable and relocate to Mesa Del Sol, five minutes south of Albuquerque Intl. Sunport.
“It’s the finest incentive package in the U.S….a rebate, not a credit,” said Smerigan. “You actually get a 25% return on what’s spent in 45-60 days. Their film financing program lends up to $15 million with a four-year interest-free loan if your film has a million-dollar budget. It makes sense for production in the state.”
Phase one of the $74 million, 28-acre studio complex will consist of eight soundstages (four 24,000 square-foot stages with 55 feet of clear height and four 18,000 square-foot stages with 45 feet of clear height), office space, backlot, mill storage and set construction space, post-production suites, production support services and retail space. The first two of the 24,000 square-foot stages are slated to open in January, with additional stages opening every three weeks thereafter. Phase one completion is slated for spring.
Recounting his decision to build Albuquerque Studios, Katersky said, “It’s the incentive program to begin with, and the fact that Albuquerque is only an hour and a half from Los Angeles.” The state, he said, “wants this kind of business and is aggressive about this kind of business — makes it a good environment for everyone.”
Phase two plans consist of an additional 28 acres to be developed for production and post-production use, eventually creating a 54-acre production campus.
“We’ll have the ability, because of the interior wall system we’re using, to open the soundstages into 48,000 square-foot and 36,000 square-foot stages,” added Smerigan. “Every conceivable production that could be done on a soundstage in L.A. could be done here.”
Pacifica has engaged Build New Mexico as the developer for Albuquerque Studios, with Amalgamated Bank of Washington D. C. and Commonwealth Realty Advisors Inc. of Chicago as its partners in construction funding.
Film production for the state has generated over $650 million since 2003, when Gov. Bill Richardson took office. Recent pics include “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Into the West,” “The Longest Yard” and “The Missing.”
* * *
Tyler Perry is expanding on his production capital to launch his 60,000 square-foot Atlanta-based Tyler Perry Studios (TPS). The facility, formerly Atlanta Stage Works, was purchased solely by Perry in June 2006 for $7 million and is the first film studio of its size in Georgia.
“TPS will establish a footprint for increased production of film, television and theater projects in this city,” said the multihyphenate. “I hope this is just the start of making Atlanta even more of a movie town.”
Scenes from Perry’s upcoming “Daddy’s Little Girls,” due out in February, were being shot during renovations and 100 episodes of his syndicated sitcom “House of Payne,” as well as his next two feature pics, are skedded to shoot at the studio.
While plans for TPS’ three-acre site include an acting school and theater company, Perry has also purchased additional land to build a more permanent studio in two or three years at another Atlanta location.
“In the first six months of 2006, the film and video industry has had an economic impact of over $200 million to the City of Atlanta,” said Mayor Shirley Franklin. “Through the establishment of Tyler Perry Studios, the city will be an even more viable location for this industry. As a producer-director and actor, Tyler has been one of the leading forces in encouraging film and video production in Atlanta.”
Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117950275.html
Posted 3 August, 2007 in NM News
May 17, 2007
From the LA Times
By Richard Verrier
Sony Pictures Imageworks, one of Hollywood’s leading visual effects companies, has decided to move more than 100 jobs from Culver City to New Mexico.
(more…)
Posted 20 September, 2006 in NM News
Article from the Hollywood Reporterr
Download Tamalewood - Shooting in New Mexico in PDF
|
