Texas ups the film incentives ante

The Texas Motion Picture Alliance members should give their lobbyists a raise. They somehow sold the Texas Legislature on a record two-year total of $95 million for the state's film incentives program. Does this mean the program now has enough bucks to attract more actual feature films and not just television shows (which aren't bad visitors either if you can get them and a drag when you don't)? Stay tuned, but it looks good. Check out The Austin Chronicle's report, which spells the numbers out.

Just two years ago it was looking like there would be no film incentives program in Texas.

And back in 2009, $60 million for the program had people smiling.

Perry's new film commish marks a shift in focus

Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced Monday that Heather Page is the new Texas film commissioner. She's got an interesting mix of background: she's worked for the Texas Film Commission (which is housed in Perry's offices), she's an actual working camerawoman and she's an at-large member of the industry lobbying group the Texas Motion Picture Alliance.

Her predecessor Evan Fitzmaurice, as well as his brief temporary replacement David Morales, is an attorney from Perry's staff. His legal background was seen by many as a desire to focus on cleaning up the process of distributing film incentive payments aimed at attracting film, television and videogame projects to the state. It was also a means of keeping the commission quietly chugging along--emphasis on quietly.

To mention the obvious, Page is also a woman, which is a plus considering allegations of sexual harassment involving former film commish Bob Hudgins just prior to his stepping down in 2010.  Hudgins, who had worked actively in the film industry, was instrumental in getting the Texas Legislature to approve a film incentives program. He was dynamo who pulled the state's many different regions together.

So the latest announcement can be seen as an effort to move back to the original role of the Texas film commissioner: attracting projects to the state.

Just one question: will Page  talk to the media? Hudgins saw that as part of his job. Fitzmaurice began referring all calls to the Perry's press office where they mostly died a slow death of despair.



Here's the press release from Perry's office:

Gov. Rick Perry has named Heather Page of Austin director of the Texas Film Commission. The commission supports Texas' growing and diverse media industries, and helps increase Texas' competitive position worldwide as a production destination. Page is an accomplished motion picture camerawoman, having worked on major feature films and television shows such as Revenge, Friday Night Lights, Armageddon and The Green Mile. She is a former workforce training administrator for the Texas Film Commission, where she helped implement the Workforce Training Program created in 2007 by the Texas Legislature. She is a board member of the Society of Camera Operators, chair of the International Cinematographers Guild Scholarship Fund and co-founder and director of Beyond the Lights Celebrity Golf Classic.

Page received a bachelor's degree in cinema from Denison University, a master's degree in cinema studies from New York University, and a certificate in graduate cinematography studies from the American Film Institute.

Texas film incentives survive; 'Lone Ranger' lurks

UPDATE: LONE RANGER IS OFFICIALLY DEAD AS A PROJECT!


My column from today's Dallas Morning News.

SHOT IN TEXAS: Legislature approves $30 million in film incentives

By JOE O’CONNELL Special Contributor

Published 09 June 2011 04:48 PM


The Texas film-incentives program appears to have survived the
legislative session, but with a lot less cash to throw at potential
projects like Johnny Depp’s Lone Ranger.

The incentive program, which is aimed at attracting film, television
commercial and video-game projects to the state, will have $30 million
to spend in the next two years. That’s exactly half of what the
Legislature approved two years ago. Another $2 million will fund program
administration and a state film archives program.

“It’s a big victory and something that we’ll have to build back up on in
the future,” said Don Stokes, president of industry lobbying group the
Texas Motion Picture Alliance. “At least it keeps the program alive at
this point.”

Most film-industry leaders are keeping their lips tight about the
allocation, perhaps concerned about unlikely changes to it during the
Legislature’s special session. But it could have been worse: An original
plan had two-year funding at $10 million and at one point the Senate
considering cutting all film-incentive funding.

The funding uncertainty kept at least one unnamed network television
series pilot from filming in Texas, Stokes said. North Texas did land
two pilots — Dallas-set Good Christian Belles , which will shoot as an
ABC series primarily in Los Angeles, and TNT’s version of Dallas, which
the network has yet to pick up as a full series.

The incentives program has been less successful competing for feature
films with other more incentive-rich states such as Louisiana and New
Mexico. The next big-name film in Texas may be a remake of The Lone
Ranger , with emphasis on the character Tonto to be portrayed by Johnny
Depp. The Disney film is expected to have a fall shoot and has been
scouting locations in West Texas, Austin and the small town of Granger
where much of True Grit was shot in 2010, Gary Bond of the Austin Film
Office confirmed.

The alliance group estimates the incentive program has generated more
than $600 million in new in-state spending and 56,000 jobs since it was
first funded in 2007.

“These incentives will keep our crew and talent working in Texas and
economically impacting our entire state,” said Waxahachie-based talent
agent Linda McAlister. “Talent live and work all over Texas, not just in
the metropolitan areas. The money is filtered throughout the communities
through production as well as individual spending.”

The Legislature clearly wants to see bottom-line results. The Texas Film
Commission has until November 2012 to come up with a 10-year plan for
the film industry to “grow beyond its traditional funding.” That
includes asking cities to get involved financially and asking colleges
and universities to bolster crew training.

“Our goal is to leverage the assets we have in the state — our talented
crews, infrastructure and location variety,” Stokes said. “We can do it
all in Texas.”

Last year the incentive program was instrumental in attracting a lot of
television series to the state — The Good Guys, Chase and Lone Star in
North Texas and My Generation and Friday Night Lights in Austin, but all
of those shows have since closed shop.

To keep either television or films from gobbling up much of the
incentives allocation, the legislation requires no more than 40 percent
of funds go to either TV, film, video games or commercials and
industrial films.

“We want to make sure all segments of the industry have a chance to grow
and prosper under the program,” Stokes said.

SHOT IN TEXAS: ‘Dallas’ pilot begins 12-day shoot

My Dallas Morning News column (which actually runs Saturday but is already up on the Web site--oddly minus my byline).--Joe

NOTE: Larry Hagman on Sunday at 8 p.m. will be at the Texas Theatre, where the original Dallas series is being screened two episodes at a time weekly.

SHOT IN TEXAS: ‘Dallas’ pilot begins 12-day shoot here next week

BY JOE O'CONNELL
filmnewsbyjoe@yahoo.com
joeoconnell.com
@joemoconnell on Twitter

The TNT series pilot for Dallas begins a 12-day North Texas shoot next week. The pilot follows the next generation of Ewings led by Jesse Metcalfe, Josh Henderson and Jordana Brewster. Larry Hagman, Charlene Tilton, Steve Kanaly, Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy from the original series are also on board.

“Just because a pilot shoots here doesn’t mean it’s going to stay if picked up,” warned Janis Burklund of the Dallas Film Commission. She has seen network shows such as Fox’s Good Guys come and go. Indeed, most of the original Dallas series was shot in Hollywood.

Dallas-set and Dallas-shot ABC pilot GCB, starring Leslie Bibb, Kristin Chenoweth and Annie Potts, recently wrapped production. Word of a series pickup is expected by mid-May.

A couple of canceled series shot in North Texas are also staging small-scale comebacks. The five unaired Chase episodes shot in Dallas will be broadcast beginning Saturday on NBC. And Lone Star creator Kyle Killen is staging a free screening of the fourth through sixth episodes of the canceled Fox series this Sunday in Austin at the Alamo Drafthouse-Ritz.

In 2009, Hagman, Dallas’ J.R. Ewing, wandered the Texas Capitol giving out fake $10,000 bills with his photo on them, successfully prodding legislators to increase filming incentives funding. But incentives are no longer such an easy sell.

With six weeks to go in the session, the Texas Legislature is hashing out the future of a filming incentives program that in 2009 awarded two-year funding of $60 million — with another $2 million for operating expenses and funding of a state film archive. This time the Senate is looking at two-year funding of $10 million, while the House is considering increasing that two-year figure to $30 million plus that spare $2 million for operations and film archive. The decision will likely be up to a House-Senate conference committee.

The industry, in a study expected to be released next week, contends the film, television and video-game industry has had a $1.1 billion impact since incentives were first funded in 2007, and a direct in-state spend of just less than $600 million. The study commissioned by the Texas Association of Business with the help of the University of Texas considers spending through 2010.

“It shows how effective we are at creating jobs,” said Don Stokes, president of the lobbying group Texas Motion Picture Alliance. “It shows the Texas program is the most efficient program out there.”

Competing states also are looking at either cutting back or eliminating filming incentives in this tight budget year. Still, New Mexico is considering a $45 million per year cap, far more than ever offered in Texas.

“Our program was designed from the beginning to be very conservative,” Stokes said, noting Texas’ strengths in trained film crews and varied filming locales. “As other programs across the country pull back and come back into reality, it makes Texas that much more competitive. We hope we end up with enough to keep Texas in the game.”
Burklund agrees. “We all know we’re going to take a cut,” she said. “I’m not panicking about it. We’re doing the best we can given the circumstances.”

Bonus footage

Dallas filmmakers Barak Epstein, Adam Donaghey, Jason Reimer and Eric Steele, working together as Aviation Cinemas, are launching what they term “crowd-funded” indie films and producing them directly from Oak Cliff’s Texas Theatre. The first project is The Verdigris, a music documentary executive-produced by Bradley Beesley (Okie Noodling) and featuring music by Beau Jennings. A donations-only performance by Jennings opened the effort at the Texas Theatre on Friday.