NEWS
Posted 3 August, 2008 in RI News
The state passed a new budget (see H 7390 Substitute A) that caps the production tax credit program at $15,000,000 annually for tax years beginning after December 31, 2007.
Posted 27 July, 2008 in RI News
The Rhode Island Film & Television Office is proud to announce that BROTHERHOOD, the critically acclaimed winner of a 2007 Peabody award, will commence photography for its third season on location in Rhode Island beginning Monday, July 28, 2008. The drama stars Jason Isaacs, Jason Clarke, Annabeth Gish and Fionnula Flanagan. It was created by Blake Masters and is Executive Produced by Mr. Masters, Henry Bromell and Elizabeth Stephen, and produced by Donna Bloom.
BROTHERHOOD is the first television series to be filmed entirely in the State of Rhode Island. The premium cable network has ordered eight more episodes to be shot on location in Providence and East Providence, as well as other towns and cities within the Ocean State.
Steven Feinberg, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Film & Television Office, welcomes the groundbreaking series Brotherhood back to the Ocean State, adding, “The return of Brotherhood will provide additional opportunities for our talented and dedicated local workforce. In the previous two seasons, Brotherhood has employed over 300 local, full-time crew members, and produced more than 225 speaking roles for local actors along with approximately 3,000 extra and walk-on roles. I would like to extend my gratitude to the Showtime executives, producers, cast and crew for making our beautiful state their location of choice.”
In January 2008, when Showtime announced Brotherhood would be returning to Rhode Island for a third season, several of our elected officials commented:
“The decision to film a third season of Brotherhood in Rhode Island is a tribute to a good story and a great place to tell it,” Governor Carcieri said. “Rhode Island is proud to welcome this project home, and the state Film and Television office should be credited for putting our state in front of the Hollywood decision makers.”
Speaker of the House William J. Murphy said, “It’s great news that Showtime has decided to shoot a third season of Brotherhood entirely in Rhode Island. The production was the first one to take advantage of the General Assembly’s film and television tax credit legislation, which has been a tremendous success. We welcome them back to film more scenes in our House chamber and offices.”
“It is exciting to have Showtime’s Brotherhood back in Rhode Island for the filming of its third consecutive season,” said President of the Senate Joseph A. Montalbano. “For two years Showtime has experienced the numerous benefits of filming in Rhode Island first hand, and it goes without saying that the on-location production has lent a significant authenticity to the program. Our state’s small size and big beauty have made Rhode Island an attractive shooting location for multiple productions, both large and small, in the few short years since we adopted film tax incentives. We look forward to many more years of hosting Brotherhood and other productions here, which in turn will bring more jobs and other opportunities to all Rhode Islanders.”
Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline remarked upon hearing the news, “I congratulate Blake Masters and the entire crew of Brotherhood for a great achievement in an incredibly competitive industry. Brotherhood is a tremendous source of good, steady jobs that pay well for our local actors and production professionals. It has been a pleasure to work closely with the Brotherhood team at every level of city government and we welcome them back for a third year.”
The Rhode Island Film & Television Office recently hosted HACHIKO, starring award winners Richard Gere and Joan Allen; TELL-TALE, a thriller starring Josh Lucas and Brian Cox; and the Warner Brothers’/Tyra Banks film production of the best-selling book series THE CLIQUE.
The Rhode Island Film & TV Office is a division of The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. For additional information on any of the past or current productions filming in Rhode Island, please visit our website at www.film.ri.gov.
Posted 15 June, 2008 in RI News
PLEASE WELCOME THE PRINCE OF PROVIDENCE
Please join Rhode Island native and renowned Director/Producer Michael Corrente and representatives from the Rhode Island Film & TV Office and the Providence Mayor’s Dept. of Art, Culture and Tourism at 3PM on Thursday, June 12, 2008 at the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument in Kennedy Plaza facing Providence City Hall, as Mr. Corrente announces plans for filming his long-awaited political biopic THE PRINCE OF PROVIDENCE.
The cast includes Dermot Mulroney, Adam Goldberg, Bradley Cooper, Ed Burns and Oliver Platt, who will portray former Providence Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci in the David Mamet adapted screenplay of Michael Stanton’s 2003 book about one of America’s longest-serving mayors. Robin Williams is currently in negotiations to join this talented group of actors.
“The passion I have for THE PRINCE OF PROVIDENCE is stronger then any film I’ve made to date. Through much scrutiny and speculation, I’ve spent six long years preparing for this picture. I have painstakingly taken the necessary time to make sure that all my ducks are in a row. This is my home state, and I have an obligation to ensure that the quality of the production matches the brilliance of the material. At the end of the day, and every day does end, nobody ever cares about how long it takes to make a movie; they only care if it’s good”, stated Mr. Corrente.
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 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.
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