Have you ever wondered why 'Black Panther' shot in Georgia, or why 'The Hunger Games' shot in North Carolina?
These are wonderful states, but they're not the glamorous star-studded locations that you might expect to see a big-budget movie set and A-list actors. And yet, in recent years, many movies and TV shows - both big-budget studio fare and lower-budget indies - have migrated away from the likes of Los Angeles and New York to shoot in states such as Michigan, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania.
Why? In most cases, it made financial sense due to the attractive tax incentives that these states offer in order to entice productions (and all the business they bring) to shoot there.
But what are tax incentives, and how did they come to be? And, most importantly, how can YOU use them to help raise the financing you need for your next project?
Production Hubs
In years gone by, the vast majority of film and TV production took place in a few select locations, which became known as ‘production hubs’.
Of all the production hubs in the world, the most recognizable is Los Angeles.
As the entertainment industry grew, it found a natural home in the southern California sunshine, and LA became the place where all the big stars and talent lived, relaxing in their glamorous homes in the Hollywood Hills or Bel Air.
A lot of talented crew followed them and made LA their home too. People set up studios there. An infrastructure was established, with equipment stores springing up, and cameras and microphones and everything else you could imagine being built there.
In short, it became the place to make movies, and a system was established and everyone was happy.
Other production hubs sprang up across the world, particularly in large, fashionable, cosmopolitan cities such as New York, London, Paris and Rome, among many others. All the most diverse, modern and trendy places where production could take place easily and conveniently, which would be an attractive home to talent, and where crews could settle and work steadily.
Trouble is, whenever you have a monopoly in any field, prices go up and people become complacent about there being only one way to do things.
For people at the lower (or cheaper) end of the market, getting the services you need at the prices you can afford becomes tough. You’re left looking for a new way of doing things.
That’s a bit like what happened in the production world as people started looking for some other options.
‘Non-Traditional’ Shooting Locations
A few years ago, as the volume of independent production started to increase, other ‘non-traditional’ shooting locations began to spring up as an alternative to the traditional production hubs.
Suddenly, less well-known countries, states, cities, and regions realized that they could provide a great product: new and interesting locations that hadn’t been seen before, local talent, new studios, and much more, and all at a price that could be interesting to filmmakers and producers.
However, these new locations were faced with a problem: how do you persuade people to come and shoot in a place they are not familiar with? Where there might not be a lot of local crew or talent? Where you might have to pay additional money to fly people out there? To put them up in hotels? To pay them per diems (the daily allowance for crew members who are away from home) and feed them?
The answer: you offer them an incentive.
This incentive might offset any additional costs of locating your production there, and possibly much more, while they treat you like royalty and make you feel wanted.
On the back of these initiatives, over the last couple of decades, we have seen incredible growth in the production activity of ‘non-traditional’ shooting destinations such as Canada, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, as well as US states including Louisiana, Michigan, and New Mexico, to name just a handful.
Consider All Options
Now, Los Angeles, New York, London, and the rest are still wonderful places to make films and TV shows. In fact, many of these so-called production hubs now offer tax incentives as well, partially in a bid to counter these so-called ‘runaway productions’ that had been migrating elsewhere.
There are many benefits to shooting in these hubs, whatever your budget, and they should always be considered as possible locations.
However, if you haven’t at least explored other options where a tax incentive might be available and can form part of your finance plan, then you might be leaving money on the table.
And nobody likes to do that…
Ricky Margolis has over 15 years' experience in the entertainment industry, and has been involved in the finance, development, production, and/or distribution of over 30 titles.
The above is an excerpt from his book "How The Hell... Do I Get My Film Financed? Book One: Tax Incentives". Click here to learn more about how you can use Tax Incentives to get YOUR next project financed and produced.
To check out all the books in our series "How The Hell... Do I Get My Film Financed?" on film & TV finance and production, please click here.
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