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TRANSPORTATION & THE PORTS
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Monday, May 16, 2005
S.C., Georgia
Poised for Return to Movie Making
Governors
sign bills setting new incentives for Hollywood
productions
By Christian
Livermore
TBR Staff
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| Beaufort's downtown became Civil
War Atlanta during filming of the 1996 film
"Scarlett." | A one-two punch
of new tax incentives from Georgia and South Carolina are
designed to lure film production back to the states.
The packages, signed last week by Georgia Gov. Sonny
Perdue and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, create a system
of tax credits or rebates for companies that shoot film,
television or video productions in the state.
For
several years, Georgia and South Carolina have watched with
envy as Louisiana scooped up most films set in the South, and
Canada and New Mexico took many of the rest, all because of
their more attractive production incentives packages. Film
commission officials for Georgia and South Carolina say the
new incentives will put them back on a competitive footing
with other locales for attracting shoots.
In Georgia,
production companies will receive a 9 percent transferable tax
credit. That means for every dollar a production company
spends in Georgia, it will get a tax credit of nine cents. If
a company spends $10 million, it will get a $900,000 tax
credit. Production companies based in California and New York
that don't need a Georgia tax credit can sell it to Georgia
companies that do. Companies that shoot in areas designated as
economically depressed will receive an additional 3 percent
credit.
South Carolina's package offers an aggressive
set of rebates. A provision already in place exempts companies
that spend at least $250,000 from sales, use and
accommodations taxes. This provision may be particularly
attractive to smaller companies that want to spend as little
money up front as possible.
The new incentives start at
the $1 million mark and will likely attract the bigger film
fish.
These million-dollar babies will get two rebates.
The first, a 15 percent labor wage rebate, applies to any
labor hired for the production as long as the individual pays
South Carolina withholding taxes. (This includes California
crew which comes in to work on a South Carolina shoot.) At the
end of the production, South Carolina will cut the company a
check for 15 percent of the total amount of labor wages it
paid.
The second incentive, the supplier rebate, works
essentially the same way. At the end of the shoot, the
production company will get a 15 percent rebate for all
expenditures it made with any South Carolina
supplier.
Incentives are the deal making for
bottom-line conscious Hollywood producers today, said South
Carolina Film Commissioner Jeff Monks said. "In this business,
the equation used to be show us your locations. Tell us about
your crew and suppliers, then if it all works, we'll come," he
said. "Now it's tell us what your incentives are, and then we
can talk about your crew and suppliers. The whole equation has
been turned around 180 degrees."
Film production is big
bucks. It brings in millions of dollars to state coffers in
production spending, not to mention the residents it employs,
both as crew and in ancillary ways like hotel and restaurant
workers and catering. But it also brings attention. The
locations of films become tourist destinations for years to
come. People still come into the Beaufort Convention and
Visitors Bureau asking to see "The Big Chill" house (the
stately home where most of the ear;y 1980s film "The Big
Chill" was filmed). That kind of exposure you just can't buy,
Beaufort Film Commissioner Liz Mitchell said.
"The
impact of filming itself can be in the millions of dollars
locally just for one production, and then the lingering and
continuing impact can last for years and years in terms of the
tourism draw," Mitchell said. "Visitors will continue to come
to an area with a film in mind. Beaufort has visitors walking
in the Visitors Center every day and asking where are some of
the places the films were shot."
Both states have been
host to a number of film productions, "Midnight in the Garden
of Good and Evil" in Savannah, for instance, and "Forces of
Nature," which was shot in the South Carolina Lowcountry. But
in recent years, Georgia and South Carolina have watched as
production companies have been lured to Louisiana, which can
double for most deep South locations, as well as New Mexico
and Canadian cities like Toronto and Montreal, which are able
to make them offers they can't refuse in the form of tax
credits and other incentives. Even Cold Mountain, the Civil
War drama set in North Carolina, was shot almost entirely in
Romania because of the cheaper labor available
there.
"Basically if you look at any of the films that
were shot in Louisiana or Canada in the last two years, those
are films Georgia was in the running for," said Dana Braun,
chairman of the Savannah Film Commission. Braun is also a
member of the Georgia Film Commission, and he chaired the
legislative committee charged by Perdue with drafting the
incentives package.
Stratton Leopold is a producer who
lives in Savannah when he's not working in Los Angeles.
Leopold has produced such films as "Paycheck," "The Sum of All
Fears," "Bless the Child" and "The General's Daughter," which
was filmed in Savannah. Leopold has spoken with local film
commissions for several years about the importance of
incentives.
The new incentives packages, he said, would
most likely entice crew members who had moved to California
and Louisiana for the work to return to Georgia and South
Carolina. That's important, because crew availability is one
factor production companies look at when choosing locations,
Leopold said,
"If the work is there, the crew will come
back," he said. "The same thing happened in North Carolina.
When they strengthened their incentives, crew started coming
back from California."
The incentives package will be
an obvious advantage for area students graduating from
production programs such as those at Savannah College of Art
and Design and looking for work in the area. SCAD President
Paula Wallace served with Braun on the committee that drafted
the Georgia package
"We have so many students who study
areas such as film production, television production, sound
design, broadcast design, so they are learning these
cutting-edge practices, so it will be beneficial for them to
choose to practice in Georgia, and beneficial to Georgia to
retain that talent," Wallace said.
Braun said Georgia
is a natural for film locations, and the incentives package is
the missing piece of the puzzle. He said he has already been
deluged with phone calls from studios since Perdue signed the
incentives package.
"Georgia has locations that are
perfect for the film industry," Braun said. "We've been
everything. The marshes around Savannah have been in Vietnam
in several movies, Forrest Gump, for instance. Savannah's
been pre-Civil War Boston. In other parts of Georgia, we've
been small towns in television series like In The Heat of The
Night. Then we've got Atlanta and other large urban
areas."
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