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Detroit, the new Hollywood?

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Started 1 year ago by RoundTowner
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RoundTowner
Miranova
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Hollywood is just like any other industry, looking to reduce costs. The average production assitant is paid $50+ an hour in Hollywood. The cost in Michigan is half of that.
Why isn't Ohio trying to lure in the film industry.

Another article about Detroit becoming Hollywood East in todays WSJ.

null

The last line of this article says it all.

"He can only hope the cameras will keep on rolling. "Hollywood follows the money," says Mr. Belding, the location manager. "If Ohio had a 50% rebate, we'd all head 100 miles south and find Paris there."

Posted 1 year ago #
bjones7
Worthington Ohio
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but they are using Detroit to build "stage sets". Then I'm guessing they are shipping them off to California. Detroit is far from Hollywood! If they are calling Detroit, "Hollywood East", its probably not what you or I think of when it comes to typical Hollywood stereo types (the same things are not happening in Detroit, I mean)

Detroit's not producing the same amount of cars they did ten years ago, so they need something else to produce. So why not "stage sets & props"? Minimum wage is ALOT cheaper in MI, and the people working are probably of a higher "skill set". Over all, I don't think anyone would be interested in Ohio for this reason. I'm sure they've looked at other states before they picked Michigan. I mean time is money!

Posted 1 year ago #
jammyave

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Movie biz is bad for michigan. 100 million in tax credits in 2010 so far and 10.3 million in related economic activity. Credits are much too large another failure of granholm.

Posted 1 year ago #
Core_Models
Columbus
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They're also knocking down the city and replacing it with farmland in Detroit. Should we emulate that too?

Posted 1 year ago #
jammyave

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No, Bing said he is not convinced of urban farming, don't expect urban farming on a large scale basis to be part of the revitalization plan, though shrinking of the city is part of the plan .

Posted 1 year ago #
Brant
Gahanna
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RoundTowner wrote >>
Hollywood is just like any other industry, looking to reduce costs. The average production assitant is paid $50+ an hour in Hollywood.

I don't know where you got that figure. The average PA makes between $100 and $200 per day, working 10-14 hours a day, six days a week. Pay for PA's is generally lower in LA because the labor market is so saturated with young people desperate to work in the industry.

Core_Models wrote >>
They're also knocking down the city and replacing it with farmland in Detroit. Should we emulate that too?

Probably makes sense for a place like Youngstown.

Posted 1 year ago #
Senator Tankerbell

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jammyave wrote >>
Movie biz is bad for michigan. 100 million in tax credits in 2010 so far and 10.3 million in related economic activity. Credits are much too large another failure of granholm.

Without those tax credits, there wouldn't be ANY movies shooting there. Is that more preferable?

Posted 1 year ago #
jammyave

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Senator Tankerbell wrote >>

jammyave wrote >>
Movie biz is bad for michigan. 100 million in tax credits in 2010 so far and 10.3 million in related economic activity. Credits are much too large another failure of granholm.

Without those tax credits, there wouldn't be ANY movies shooting there. Is that more preferable?

Yes, negative return on investment is bad.

Posted 1 year ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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RoundTowner wrote >>
Hollywood is just like any other industry, looking to reduce costs. The average production assitant is paid $50+ an hour in Hollywood. The cost in Michigan is half of that.
Why isn't Ohio trying to lure in the film industry.

Deja Vu!

http://www.columbusunderground.com/forums/topic/why-are-no-current-movies-filmed-in-columbus-yet-tons-filmed-in-pittsburgh

Posted 1 year ago #
Brant
Gahanna
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From Variety:

In Michigan, which has the most aggressive rebate in the country (up to 42%), debate is heating up after a report issued last week [pdf] cast doubts about the economic benefits of the state's program.

Released by the nonpartisan Senate Fiscal Agency, the issue paper concluded, "The state will never be able to make the credit 'pay for itself' from a state revenue standpoint, even when the credit generates additional private activity that would not have otherwise occurred."

Other states are looking at their programs as well:

New Mexico's 25% rebate program, widely hailed as a success, came under scrutiny last year after two separate economic impact studies arrived at divergent conclusions.

Last year, Wisconsin rolled back its efforts to lure Hollywood because of budget shortfalls and a damning study by the Commerce Dept.

After allegations of fraud in the state's Film Office led to criminal indictments in Iowa, Democratic Gov. Chet Culver vowed to shut down the state's program. "We're not going to be taken for suckers," he said recently.

And in cash-strapped New Jersey, Republican Gov. Chris Christie suspended its rebates for one year to review them. "We're trying to see if the program is workable as it is or whether it should be retooled," says Steven Gorelick, exec director of the New Jersey Film Commission, who says the results of the state's study are due in mid-October.

RTWTH

Posted 1 year ago #
Senator Tankerbell

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jammyave wrote >>

Senator Tankerbell wrote >>

jammyave wrote >>
Movie biz is bad for michigan. 100 million in tax credits in 2010 so far and 10.3 million in related economic activity. Credits are much too large another failure of granholm.

Without those tax credits, there wouldn't be ANY movies shooting there. Is that more preferable?

Yes, negative return on investment is bad.

That's not a negative return. The income derived from the productions are creating jobs and promoting career-development and diversification that the city of Detroit badly needs. Try telling someone that now has a job due to the motion picture industry in Michigan that it's a bad idea to have those productions there.

Posted 1 year ago #
somebuckeye
Franklinton
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you can't shoot a movie in the midwest, there's no sunlight :)

Posted 1 year ago #
sonnyboo
Columbus, Ohio USA EARTH
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I work with a composer in Michigan who used to live in LA. He's still getting work because if the California companies hire him, they will get 30% of his salary back from Michigan.

No one can compete with these tax breaks.

Posted 1 year ago #
Brant
Gahanna
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"Michigan's film incentives are leaving. So are its filmmakers."

In 2008, Michigan created one of the nationÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s most aggressive rebate programs with a 42% tax credit that provided unlimited rebates. ... That changed in February, when newly elected governor Rick Snyder proposed reducing the credit from unlimited rebates to an annual $25 million cap. Ã¢â‚¬Å“I got a call three hours later after the governorÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s proposal that I was out of a job,Ã¢â‚¬Â says production coordinator Jax Baker, calling from the road on her way to New Orleans.

Source: Indiewire

Posted 1 year ago #
Brant
Gahanna
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After 90 years of motion picture film processing in Detroit, Grace & Wild Studios has ceded to the increasing dominance of the digital world and closed its FilmCraft division in favor of handling file based workflows and film archival work.

Jeff Wanless, FilmCraft’s lab manager for 13 years, says FilmCraft will refer processing requests to Chicago’s Filmworkers Astro Labs. With the closing last year of Minneapolis’ and now FilmCraft in Detroit having ended, Astro stands as the Midwest’s sole 35/16mm processing lab.

Two factors led to the closing: the inevitable and increasing transition from film to digital capture and the killing of Michigan’s top-rated film incentives by Gov. Rick Snyder this year, which vastly reduced the amount of film the lab was processing.

“What people may not realize is the sheer magnitude of film that passed through our facility,” notes Wanless, who leaves the company along with three other lab employees on Friday.

“Thanks in part to Michigan film incentives, in the last four years the lab processed film for over 20 features — 500,000 feet for the feature ‘30 Minutes or Less’ alone,” amounting to 1.5 million feet of film,” says Wanless. That amount sunk to 100,000 feet this year.

Source.

Posted 6 months ago #