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One of the more interesting subplots in the world of state film incentives has been the issue of state censorship or the prospect of film commissions being in the unenviable position of acting as morality police. Censorship may not be the best word, however, because there is no threat of any state or jurisdiction...
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 tourism and agriculture commercials to shoot in California. Why is...
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 my recent working paper on runaway production and utilize some...
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 stoprunawayproduction.com), it was still very much appreciated. I told Brent...
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 no idea what they were doing (and that’s being kind…...
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 article, Moore is doing the following: TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. —...
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 that eventually became less fashionable, and these days the industry...
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, I have also written about tweaks to the program that...
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 experts who have been critical of film incentives generally: One...
Variety.com – H'w'd and D.C.