Local filmmakers hope you can help save the day for their industry

Local filmmakers made that video clip (featuring actors from the West Seattleites-featuring “The Collectibles“) to educate you, entertain you, and inspire you to give them a hand. Not the applause kind – the making-a-call or writing-e-mail kind. ASAP. They’re trying to save their industry from an unhappy ending.

As West Seattleite Todd Downing explains, SB 5539 – regarding incentives for the film industry in our state – is hung up in the State Legislature. The State Senate has passed it (including a “yes” vote from our area’s Sen. Sharon Nelson) but it hasn’t come to a vote in the State House, and it might fade to black if that doesn’t happen by Thursday. A phone call or note from you might help it get there. Todd elaborates:

Just about every state in the US has a film industry tax incentive program to entice productions to the state, and local areas within the state. Washington’s program is about mid-range in comparison to other states. What it does is refund a certain percentage of a production’s expenditures based on budget level and local talent/crew hired.

As we are sandwiched between Oregon and BC, both of which having superior incentive programs, much of our talent and skilled crew end up leaving the WA film community for jobs in Portland or Vancouver. Our existing incentive program is the baseline that we must build on to create more jobs for skilled crew and support personnel, as well as keeping performance talent in the state … Anyway, the numbers are pretty overwhelmingly in favor of continuing the current incentives by a huge margin of return per dollars spent.

Want to give SB 5539 a boost? We noticed on the Legislature’s website that it’s scheduled for a public hearing in Olympia at 10 this morning, before the House Ways and Means Committee (whose members include West Seattle State House Rep. Eileen Cody). You might not be able to get there, but you can call the legislative hotline at 1-800-562-6000, and e-mail/call Rep. Cody to urge that she support getting the bill to a vote.

CandrewB March 7, 2012 (6:02 am)

Yeah, it would be nice to better compete for film production, but it’s politically untenable to compete with Canada. We could cut all State taxes for film production but how many people would support the State directly paying for production labor, costs that are normally paid by the production company? That is what Canada does. It was a concerted effort nationally to create an industry by stealing ours and it costs Canadian tax payers about $13 billion per year.

JD March 7, 2012 (6:12 am)

No issue with this as long as a rider is attached that the state will also pay part of the Boeing or Microsoft wages as well. Film industry has more than enough money to finance the projects and shoot wherever they want.

raincity March 7, 2012 (7:20 am)

Nice job – good message. I think all they are asking is to bring it to a vote. Indy films don’t have the budget to film here – would you rather they go to Vancouver?

CB March 7, 2012 (7:46 am)

Attracting movie productions requires more than a tax incentive. Its all about infrastructure. At best, Seattle can only support one big budget movie. After that, there are scant resources. Seattle / Washington State will never be a big movie making destination… we’re simply too close to BC, which invested heavily into infrastructure support and has a deep talent/crew base.

Our local industry survives on tv commercials, and projects for Microsoft. The Legislature should concentrate on attracting more commercials to our area. We have great locations, scenery and people to support these types of productions.

I’ve seen this push to make Seattle “Hollywood North” for 25 years… it’s never going to happen.

Rod Clark March 7, 2012 (7:51 am)

The Office of Financial Management’s fiscal note about this bill informs us that it would cost us $17.5 million between 2013 and 2017, and we can expect similar costs to continue forever beyond that.

This extra money for the movie industry will come from cuts in other areas of the budget, and this year education is a prime target. That money would be better spent on restoring some of the budget cuts to education. If you contact your legislator about this bill, please emphasize that increasing subsidies for movies is not a higher priority than that.

sassy March 7, 2012 (8:20 am)

I agree with you CB. Especially the fact that Canada, BC in particular, has invested heavily in infrastructure support and a deep talent/crew base.
Vancouver, and the lower mainland, was given the term ‘Hollywood North’ a long time ago.
But I disagree with CandrewB that Canada has ‘stolen’ an industry from the US. They’ve developed a great film school (UBC), production lots, etc. Once again, Seattle is just way, way behind and not able to be competitive. It’s very frustrating, when you know the potential is there.

You can’t blame that on another city/country that has the wherewithall to promote and develop it’s competitive edge.

Robert2715 March 7, 2012 (8:44 am)

Wish it were “illegal” to market a “Seattle” based film that filmed in Vancouver, BC. Just saying.

Johnny Davies March 7, 2012 (10:37 am)

I’m part of the film community – I own a business in the film/video production industry. My business has been here for almost 25 years and we’ve seen all sizes of productions come through Seattle/Washington to work in our studios or work locations with our gear.

That said, I’m not entirely excited about this video that is circulating. 1, I don’t think it highlights our local talents/professionalism in the craft of film making and 2, I don’t think the video very effectively conveys the meaning of what the Film Competitiveness program (SB5539) is about.

The film competitiveness program, SB 5539 that we’re hoping to pass (again) is a rebate based program. In order to qualify for this rebate, a production needs to meet a few important criteria: 1st, the budget has to be above pre-set $ thresholds (I believe $250k for Commercials/Indie & $500k for Feature), 2nd that budget needs to be spent entirely in Washington. 3rd, the crew that is hired needs to be predominantly local – with the exception of “A” level creatives that may come from other markets (its their projects we want to shoot here after all). If these criteria are met, a pre-set rebate % of total budget spent is given back to the production company.

A $250k commercial is not all that uncommon. There are many shot here per year. This equates to literally millions of dollars spent in local economies: restaurants, hotel accommodations, rental cars, caterers, crew, locations, equipment, etc. Without a viable Film Competitiveness program for our state, why would a production company shoot here, when 30 other states in our Union offer at least some kind of similar program? That’s right, they won’t shoot here, they’ll spend their budgets in other states (unless an agency specifies Washington). The purpose of this program is not to make Washington become “Hollywood North”. The purpose of this program is to make our state competitive with other states – to try to influence production dollars to be spent in our economies vs elsewhere. This type of production incentive has far reaching economic influence – after all – how many tourist dollars are generated for our state by visitors to Forks because of the Twilight franchise?

To eliminate confusion, our state already has, and has had, a SEPARATE sales tax exemption for Film/Video (RCW 82.08.0315), which grants a sales tax holiday to production companies who are not creating erotic content. This sales tax exemption covers: rental equipment for production, hotel accommodations, rental cars, editing & and basically any production service – and the list goes on and on. This exemption is very different than SB 5539.

By now, the Bill has been in front of the Ways & Means committee (scheduled for 10am this morning), but just thought I’d shed some light. I have yet to learn the outcome of the hearing.

Johnny Davies March 7, 2012 (12:30 pm)

If interested, this was a video produced in 2011 whilst going through the process last time. I think it speaks to our interests and of our industry in a very effective way:

http://youtu.be/yLjNVXaU9uE

WSB March 7, 2012 (1:16 pm)

Thanks, JD. I know the other clip’s goofy but Todd took the time to reach out and put this on our radar, so I appreciate the info he originally provided, and your added info/clip … certainly any incentive program can be debated, but there’s a long list of others that seem less worthy and more costly. My dad was in the film industry long ago and far away (an award-winning title designer in ’60s and ’70s Hollywood) so maybe I have a mild soft spot … Meantime, we’ll update this when we hear how the hearing turned out. I just checked the link to the bill’s status site and no update yet, but then again, I don’t know how long the Ways/Means proceedings today last/ed … TR

CandrewB March 7, 2012 (1:33 pm)

I didn’t mean “steal” it from Seattle, but from the entire US, mainly Hollywood. And it is not just Vancouver but the entire country.

“According to a 2001 U.S. Department of Commerce report by Commerce Secretary, Norman Mineta, “Runaway film production’ has affected thousands of (U.S.) workers in industries ranging from computer graphic to construction workers and caterers. These losses threaten to disrupt important parts of a vital American industry.”

“The U.S. film industry has voiced concerns about this outsourcing trend which began in the mid to late 1990s, and which coincided with increased Canadian government subsidy programs.

A DGA-funded study confirmed that the Canadian government has engaged in a comprehensive and aggressive, long-term strategic campaign to lure U.S. productions to Canada. The report estimates that runaway productions cost the United States over 50,000 jobs and at least US$10 billion in production monies annually.”

Ben March 7, 2012 (2:33 pm)

SOME CLARIFICATION:

This video was shot on Sunday March 7th 2012 and put online the next day.

The audience was simply people who are not in the film industry. It was a 24 hour turnaround to highlight the last minute effort of Washington Filmworks in a light hearted and entertaining way.

To move beyond opinions, I encourage everyone who has the interest go to http://blog.washingtonfilmworks.org/.

Thank you.

Pigeon Hill Jim March 7, 2012 (5:33 pm)

I have worked in the film and video “industry” (if it is to be called that here) in Seattle for almost thirty years, in one capacity or another. While I want to be on record as supporting the above mentioned bill (and have called my West Seattle Senator and Reps accordingly), shall we say, I have seen this legislative movie before. Over the past thirty years we have watched Portland and Vancouver BC get their act together and their film industry be duly rewarded. Seattle, and Washington are always promising to catch up, always almost there, never quite figuring it out and in the final scene coming up short. We do not have the stages, the crews numbers or the right incentives (or will to legislate them) to quite get there. This is a corporate video town, and the crews we do have here are excellent, and I, for one, am still able to make a living here for now. I applaud and admire people like Todd (who I don’t know) who are keeping the faith and trying again, but it may take more than this bill to make the difference.

Vanessa Eng March 7, 2012 (9:29 pm)

Thanks WSB for this post & for the support! I too work in the film industry, primarily in the commercial world. I was at the Ways & Means Committee Hearing today & it was obvious we had a lot of support. There were about 20 of us in attendance, plus the 4 people testifying for the bill. The committee itself also seemed very supportive, of course with the exception of the chair. We recently learned that the bill has passed out of that committee & will be considered by the full House tomorrow. Rep. Eileen Cody has told me she fully supports this bill but Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon is still deciding how he will vote. If anyone would be willing to contact him, here is a link with a pre-written letter of support. Just add your name & any comments you may have & click Send.

http://www.indieclub.com/wasupport/index.asp

Thanks again!!!

WSB March 7, 2012 (9:45 pm)

Thanks for the update, Vanessa!

boy March 8, 2012 (1:53 pm)

Gee the work Im in is also slowing down but I think with your money and you take that risk so I wont have to would be great. That way it does not mater what produce I get payed.

ohthehorror March 8, 2012 (3:21 pm)

I hear you, “boy”. I would also be frustrated if I was paid in produce. I’m not sure how it applies to the issue at hand, but I can understand your concern.