Thanks to politically active Santa Barbara doctoral student Lauren Copeland for sending the following story about the “California Cows” commercial controversy, which I covered HERE and HERE.  In what should have been a “no-duh”, California is about to pass a bill that requires state...
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I just added Stephen Friday’s wonderful and extensive case study about the film industry and incentive programs in Shreveport, Louisiana (and Louisiana in general) to the Report Library.  Stephen is a masters student at the University of Amsterdam and was kind enough to cite...
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I had the privilege to speak yesterday with TheWrap’s Brent Lang, who just posted an excellent article on state film incentives HERE.  Brent was kind enough to plug this site and although he got the site address wrong (it’s stop-runaway-production.com with the dashes, not...
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Looks like there is some good news for Iowa, whose “two for one” 50% production incentive was, briefly, the most generous incentive in the US.  Sadly, the gravy train was short lived because the people in charge of running the Iowa film office had...
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So it turns out Michael Moore is putting the “corporate welfare” money he received from the Michigan film incentive program to good use.  I posted about this story some time ago HERE, where Moore’s stance on the credits is discussed.  According to an AP...
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I’ve never had much respect for USA Today, but their August 2 article about the film industry in Louisiana made me cringe.  It’s rife with problems…. Let’s start with the article’s second & third sentences: In the 1990s, filmmakers often traveled to Canada.  But...
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I’ve been posting quite a bit about California lately and new numbers coming out about the effectiveness of the states one-year-old film incentive, which is rather modest.  And certainly, while I have called the modesty of the California film incentive a pretty smart move,...
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On July 27, Kathy Bergen of the the Chicago Tribune wrote an excellent article about the Illinois film incentive and the efficacy of film incentives generally.   Bergen spent time talking to academics (including Susan Christopherson, who is a friend of this site) and other...
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The Santa Monica-based Milken Institute, an “independent economic think tank”, released an excellent “must read” report on how runaway production is impacting California called “Film Flight: Lost Production and its Economic Impact on California”.  The 46-page report has been added to the Report Library...
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Over the weekend, Joe Sutton’s radio show in Los Angeles, “The Heart of Hollywood” (on AM 1260 KGIL), featured a can’t miss hour-long discussion about runaway production, the importance of Hollywood to California and L.A., and efforts to keep the industry from leaving California. ...
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There was a significant report released last week by FilmL.A.  First, I want to say a few things about FilmL.A.  As far as I am concerned, they are the gold standard for how industry-community relations should be handled.  The film production reports produced by...
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 Bob Poole’s June 29 article in the Los Angeles Times caught my attention.  Framed as an nostalgic issue of the Hollywood “landmark” being demolished in favor of development company behind movie studios in New Mexico and elswhere and, therefore, partly responsible for runaway production,...
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Below is an excellent video from Wisconsin about the debate concerning that state’s film incentive program, which was cancellled some time ago.  While the video is not new, the debate offered is basicly the same one taking place in many states around the nation. ...
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Almost a month ago I made a post about the MPAA’s “State by State Statistics”, which is available on their site HERE.  I raised some accuracy concerns and had some questions about the source(s) of their data.  During a conference call today, those concerns...
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