Shoot In California Blog RSSIt’s time for some “deleted scenes” that will not be making it into the final version of my forthcoming law review article, “Down the Rabbit Hole: The Madness of State Film Incentives as a ‘Solution’ to Runaway Production“, which will be published by the University of Pennsylvania’s Journal of Business Law later this year. ...
There is a fantastic post on the Film Works blog that has a fairly detailed breakdown of the major expenditures of a major film production that spent $20.2 million over 93 days shooting in Los Angeles in 2009. Here is a sample of the itemized expenditures: Hotel room days: 213 $66,061 Car rental days:...
Below is the first half of the Film Works campaign’s analysis of the brand new LAEDC study on the economic impact of the California film incentive. It is quite thorough and is a honest appraisal of the report, which some people are attempting to spin as showing a positive return on investment for the...
There is a general consensus that producers, studios and filmmakers who take advantage of generous film incentives are not to blame for runaway production, but rather the underlying incentive. Filmmaking is a highly competitive business and the stakes are huge. Most films lose money, and one big-budget flop can sink a studio. If a...
The final days of the excessive Michigan film incentive are playing out in dramatic fashion. I have to admit, I thought the following PSA produced for the Michigan Production Alliance was quite good, in terms of the emotional impact it makes. It had one on me, in any event. That said, I also had...
The brief interview below made me gasp at the end, when I heard how much money this one motion picture catering business in Los Angeles spends at just one of its many vendors, who are also in California. I think this highlights the very real danger to California from runaway production. The losses and...
The new economic impact report for Louisiana was released today and is available in the Report Library under Louisiana. I will be digesting it over the next week or so, but wanted to post the highlight that jumped out at me most. In 2010 alone, Louisiana spent $97.6 million to subsidize just four movies. ...
In the last of the three posts on Canada, here is a compilation of some of the more interesting charts, figures and statistics from the various Canadian reports recently added to the Report Library. Want to know how much Canada is spending on foreign productions in British Columbia? The following data is from the...
“Tax incentives are the common currency that draws film and television production to various locations throughout the world. While international competition is intense, the British Columbia tax credit programs – Film Incentive BC and the Production Services Tax Credit – continue to act as the key determinant of film and television production in the...
This post marks a new milestone for the site: this is the 100th entry on the site! Even better, March 2011 is now the busiest month on record for site traffic! Thank you readers! Since this is the 100th post, I thought it was an appropriate time to put some focus back on Canada....
The producers of the upcoming film “Oz: The Great & Powerful” should be thanking Michigan’s taxpayers, but they are probably laughing all the way to the bank. According to the new annual report from the Michigan Film Office, which is available in the Report Library under “Michigan”, the state is giving the $104.8 million...
The following video is from the ABC affiliate in Los Angeles that covered the Film Works launch event.
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’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...
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 HERE. I thought the report was excellent and well worth...
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. On balance, I think each side makes some excellent points. ...
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 were fully addressed and the MPAA went out of their...
Rather than making the previous entry on this issue even longer, I elected to put my most recent exchange with Mr. Hiltzik in a shorter post. If you have not read the earlier post and exchange, please do so as this is a continuation thereof. This has proven to be a wonderful exchange and...
UPDATE: Micheal Hiltzik sent me an email this morning in response to my post below. His email and my response are at the end of this post. Ed Gutentag’s “Shoot Movies in California Blog” had an interesting post about a recent column in the June 16th edition of the Los Angeles Times by Michael...
Variety.com – H'w'd and D.C.