NEWS
Posted 8 June, 2008 in NY News
The state expects more productions, such as ‘Ugly Betty,’ to turn up because of boosted tax credits.
By Matea Gold and Richard Verrier
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
7:11 PM PDT, June 2, 2008
NEW YORK — IS THIS city poised to take a bite out of Hollywood’s bread and butter?
A dramatically expanded state tax credit for film and television productions has made New York a more appealing shooting locale than ever, bringing a wave of projects into the city this summer. Barring an actors strike, local soundstages expect to have more demand than they can fill in the coming months.
“We’ve had an onslaught of calls,” said Douglas C. Steiner, chairman of Steiner Studios, a sprawling production facility at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
It’s a remarkable shift from just five years ago, when the entertainment industry largely steered clear of New York because of the high costs and logistical hassles involved with shooting here. But aggressive efforts by local and state officials have made the region more production-friendly — including a tax credit adopted in 2004.
In April, Gov. David Paterson signed a bill that boosted the tax credit on below-the-line expenses for qualified productions to 30%, up from 10%. Television series and movies filmed in New York City are eligible for an additional 5% rebate. (Below-the-line expenses are generally the costs beyond those of the cast, writer, producer, director, stunts and story rights.)
The lucrative incentives immediately got the attention of production executives at major Hollywood studios.
“It’s having a huge impact right now,” said Jim Sharp, executive vice president of television production for 20th Century Fox Television, which decided to produce its new ABC show, “Life on Mars,” at the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens. “If you try and lock in a soundstage facility, there are people standing in line. You better not blink, or you’re going to miss an opportunity.”
Unlike about 40 other states, California does not offer a tax credit program to keep its signature industry at home. And it now faces increasing competition not just from New York but also from states such as Michigan, Mississippi and Georgia, which have recently adopted incentive programs.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports the idea of offering more than $100 million worth of tax credits to keep production in California but has been unable to persuade the state Legislature to adopt such incentives. This year, with the state facing an estimated $15.2-billion hole in its next budget, the governor has yet to propose legislation to stem runaway production.
New York officials tout their expanded program not as an attack on California but rather as a way of leveling the playing field with nearby states such as Connecticut and Massachusetts, which dangled new tax incentives before the industry in the last few years, siphoning away an estimated $750 million from the New York economy.
“Projects that were written for New York and should have been in New York were going to our neighbors,” said Pat Swinney Kaufman, executive director of the Governor’s Office for Motion Picture and Television Development.
But New York’s move has caused ripples of anxiety in Los Angeles, which has lost much of its homegrown industry to Canada and other more affordable regions in the last decade, along with thousands of jobs.
Feature films make up the bulk of the so-called runaway production. The number of film production days shot on location in Los Angeles has plummeted nearly 40% since 1997, according to figures from FilmL.A. Inc., a nonprofit group that handles film permits.
Helping to offset the decline has been a surge in TV production. But union officials, who represent below-the-line workers, such as technicians and stylists, fret that New York’s beefed-up financial incentives will now lure away that work as well.
They’re most alarmed by ABC Studios’ decision this month to decamp the series “Ugly Betty” from Los Angeles and move it to New York for its third season because of the tax credit program.
Several of next season’s high-profile new shows are following suit. Production of the detective drama “Life on Mars” was going to take place in Los Angeles, but a change in show-runners allowed it to move to New York.
Fox’s much-anticipated supernatural thriller “Fringe” will also be done in New York after Warner Bros., the studio producing the series, concluded that the tax credits made it more appealing than Toronto. And NBC’s “Kings,” a modern-day David-and-Goliath story, will use Gotham as a backdrop because of the financial incentives.
In addition, Hollywood studios have told the city to expect a slew of feature films later this year, said Katherine Oliver, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting.
The prospect of losing more productions to New York has exacerbated the worries of Los Angeles-based crew members, who are still feeling the aftershocks of a 100-day writers strike that largely froze production on both coasts earlier this season.
“Television is really the lifeblood of the below-the-line economy in Hollywood, so if we start losing TV series to other states, then obviously it’s going to create more hardship for our members,” said Steve Dayan, business agent for Local 399 of the Teamsters, which represents casting directors, location managers and drivers.
Production executives said that they’d like to keep shows in Los Angeles but that the economic climate had forced them to make clear-eyed choices.
“The fact that our country and our company are having a tough year puts a lot of focus on the financial side,” Sharp said. “If there’s a show that creatively works in Los Angeles or New York, clearly New York has an advantage.”
ABC’s decision to relocate “Ugly Betty” boosted the pressure on California officials to do more to fend off the new suitors. The show’s 150 full-time crew members who lost their jobs took the unusual step of placing an ad in Daily Variety calling on Schwarzenegger and other elected officials to enact incentives to keep production in the state.
“We implore you to do everything in your power to level the playing field and bring our jobs back to California,” the crew members wrote.
Still, Los Angeles isn’t expected to lose its perch as the leading TV production hub any time soon. The city is home to many stars who prefer to work there, and the proximity gives Hollywood studios more oversight.
On top of that, New York City has just three major soundstages, which limits its capacity to handle large productions. All plan to expand, and city officials are considering licensing additional facilities, such as warehouses and armories, to keep up with the demand.
Alan Suna, chief executive of Silvercup Studios in Queens, said he thought established series would move to New York only if the decision made creative sense, as it did for “Ugly Betty,” which is set in New York.
“I don’t think anyone in Los Angeles should feel a slightest bit of panic,” Suna said. “If they have palm trees in them, don’t expect them to be shot here.”
“Anyone thinking we’re displacing Hollywood is foolhardy,” said Hal G. Rosenbluth, president of Kaufman Astoria Studios.
The region more likely to feel the brunt of New York’s aggressive tax incentive program is Canada, which has already lost business because of the strong Canadian dollar.
Foreign production spending in British Columbia dropped to $536 million in 2007 from $950 million in 2006, according to the province’s Ministry of Tourism, Sport and the Arts.
In an effort to keep up, the province boosted its own tax credit rate last month.
matea.gold@latimes.com
richard.verrier@latimes.com
Posted 29 March, 2008 in NY News
LINK TO ARTICLE
Posted 28 January, 2008 in NY News
The NYS Gov. just introduced a new Finance Bill that would increase the NYS Production Credit from 10% to 15%, and would NOW include “above the line” (actors, directors, and producers, etc.) which is currently not a qualified expenditure in NYS & NYC.
The proposed legislation does not apply to the NYC Production Credit.
Posted 12 January, 2008 in NY News
With the New York skyline changing on a daily basis, lensing in the Big Apple can be a tricky, painstaking task. Yet with the city’s 2005 Made in New York incentive program in full swing, 129 films have taken on the difficult job of transforming Gotham into a vision of the past, present and future — mixing practical locations, visual effects and studio space to achieve the desired effect.“We Own the Night” director James Gray was scrupulous about his vision for 1988-era New York City. “I think period movies are often done quite wrong,” he says. “I view history as an accumulation of detail. And what I see all the time is, ‘It’s 1972 …’ and then you hear awatcha, awatch and everyone’s dressed in bellbottoms. That’s not the way the world is! Some people are cutting-edge in 1972, and they wear that stuff and listen to Curtis Mayfield, but most people look like 1960 or ‘50. And that was the struggle: the creation of a sense of history that (extended) from 1988 before.”
That meant attention to the smallest detail, including changing all the visible “Walk/Don’t Walk” signs.
“The producer would come up to me with his hair falling out and go, ‘Jimmy, that costs $40,000! Will anyone notice?’ And the answer is yes, they notice all the time, they kill you for it,” Gray says.
“American Gangster” production designer Arthur Max also made sure to change street signs — as well as the lights themselves — to re-create Richie Roberts and Frank Lucas‘ 1970s-era Harlem.
“Having spent my early days as a student in New York during that period, I knew those locations very well,” Max says. “But the problem was that Harlem has been so gentrified. Most of the killers, drug dealers and hookers are gone. Now you can get a good latte and a panini there, so it was difficult to use the actual locations.”
Instead, Max moved Lucas’ center of operations 20 blocks north from the original address — 116th Street and 8th Avenue — to 136th Street. He also used all five boroughs as well as Governor’s Island and Newark to portray Lucas’ Harlem-based drug empire.
“We would always come up against new buildings and new building projects. In one case, we scouted this vacant lot on Frederick Douglass Boulevard and it was fine, then six weeks later there was a building there. That happened on many occasions all over the place. In the end, I found the nitty gritty of what Harlem was in the late ’60s/early ’70s in Newark.”
Newark also proved to be a saving grace for “Across the Universe” production designer Mark Friedberg, who searched everywhere for a location to double as the Times Square of the ’60s.
“We just couldn’t find that old, seedy place that Times Square used to be, so we ended up using streets in Newark.” But re-creating the old storefronts, particularly the sex shops, proved trickier than expected. “The location we worked in was this very pious Muslim community, so we had a lot of explaining to do, and we had to get it down right away,” he says.
Lasse Hallstrom’s “The Hoax” also harks back to pre-Giuiliani New York, which meant taking locations like Central Park and “messing it up just a little bit because (the story) took place before they cleaned up the city,” explains production designer Mark Ricker.
Disturbing one of the last green areas in Gotham is not an easy task due to the Central Park Conservancy’s restrictions on the use of heavy equipment on grass or the addition of any plants. That’s one reason “The Brave One” production designer Kristi Zea decided to find another location to shoot that film’s pivotal murder sequence, which takes place under a bridge in Central Park.
“We wound up shooting in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park because they were a lot more lenient about equipment and how we were going to be able to work inside the park,” she says.
Obstacles for contempo productions “Michael Clayton” and “Enchanted” — which focus on two very different aspects of the city’s personality, one strictly corporate, the other more fanciful — involved working with Midtown Manhattan crowds.
“We shot a couple of takes of George Clooney walking down the sidewalk without controlling the crowds, but then people started to recognize him, so we had to quit,” says “Clayton” production designer Kevin Thompson.
Pedestrians were no less curious about the sight of Amy Adams emerging from an actual manhole in the middle of Times Square.
“The (extras) in the immediate foreground were our people, but at a certain point you can’t control the crowds,” says “Enchanted” production designer Stuart Wurtzel. “It’s Times Square — it’s a very difficult place to get completely empty.”
That’s exactly the challenge that faced “I Am Legend,” in which Will Smith wanders through a deserted New York City. Although they relied on a set to simulate post-apocalyptic Times Square, production designer Naomi Shohan was able to empty key areas of the city, including the Grand Central Terminal viaduct, Herald Square and Washington Square Park.
“The most difficult thing was arranging to close down those principal parts of the town,” Shohan says. “There was a lot of diplomacy and support from the city of New York for us to be able to pull that off.”
Posted 3 July, 2007 in NY News
Film in New York and get free Coffee!!!!
Posted 19 January, 2007 in NY News
BY SARA KUGLER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
NEW YORK — You might have seen a vampire on one corner, a princess on the other and a gangster down the block last year in New York City, where a record was set for the number of film and television shoots.
Streets and soundstages in 2006 were crowded with productions as the city hosted its highest number of film, television, commercial and music video shoots ever, according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, which promotes and regulates the industry in the city..
(more…)
Posted 12 May, 2006 in NY News
May 11, 2006
By Gregg Goldstein
NEW YORK — With Harvey Weinstein and New York film commissioner Katherine Oliver by his side, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced plans Wednesday to allocate $30 million a year for the city’s film and television tax incentive program through 2011. The move increases the annual allotment from the $12.5 million-a-year pilot program, which met its cap three years ahead of schedule in March.
The initiative will be negotiated in the next few weeks with the City Council. Bloomberg’s announcement comes after the state Legislature overrode Gov. George Pataki’s veto of a 2007 budget revenue package that included the state’s new $60 million annual tax credit bill.
Pataki always expressed support for the bill but objected to some of the surrounding legislation. His decision not to fight the override effectively turned it into law and allowed the city to opt into the program.
Speaking on location in Tribeca during the Weinstein Co. production of “The Nanny Diaries,” Bloomberg cited a list of statistics from what he called “The Bloomie Diaries.” He noted that last year there were 31,570 production-shooting days in the city, up 35% from 2004 and double 2002’s number.
Bloomberg said that not only would qualifying film and TV productions earn a 5% city rebate and a 10% state rebate but also free advertising on bus shelters and in other venues throughout the city. “It really is critical to reduce our reliance on Wall Street” for revenue, he said.
Weinstein, presented with a “Made in N.Y.” T-shirt by the mayor, said “Nanny Diaries” would have been shot in Toronto without the incentive. He added that the “spillover” effect of the program will keep more video and technology companies in the city.
“I’ve been in Beijing and backwater provinces of Romania to shoot movies about New York City” before the program began, Weinstein said. His company is producing the third season of “Project Runway” locally with Bravo and Miramax.
Councilmen David Yassky and David Weprin, who joined Bloomberg at the news conference, said they anticipate no resistance to the mayor’s proposal.
As for the possibility that the program could once again meet its cap ahead of schedule, Julianne Cho, assistant commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, said, “It was clear we needed more money, and we’ve carefully measured how much we needed.”
Oliver responded to reports that Dick Wolf’s television productions like “Law & Order” were taking up the bulk of the tax incentives with unbridled enthusiasm for the show. “We are thrilled that ‘Law & Order’ is here,” she said. “That one show employs more than 1,200 people,” though at an April 26 conference, she emphasized that the main purpose of the program was to attract new productions.
Wolf was happy with the decision. “New York’s production future is now brighter than ever,” he said.
City officials also suggested that they would look to match the state’s recent addition of a commercial incentive. “We are committed to seeing legislation that supports the commercial industry in a way that makes sense for the city,” Oliver said, “and look forward to reviewing the proposed program.”
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