Article published September 20, 2009
Michigan incentive produces lights, cameras, jobs
Movie industry spending millions in state
Clint Eastwood films 'Gran Torino' in Grosse Pointe Park. The film was rewritten to be set in the Detroit area to take advantage of Michigan's incentives.
(
DETROIT NEWS/BRANDY BAKER
)
|
By LARRY P. VELLEQUETTE
BLADE BUSINESS WRITER
From makeup-wearing armed insurgents roaming metro Detroit to a $146 million studio being built 50 miles north of Toledo, motion pictures are recasting Michigan's devastated economic landscape.
And in doing so, an industry that once made its home almost exclusively in sunny Southern California is now bringing hundreds of well-paying - although often temporary - jobs to a state mired deeply in the recession.
"I think Michigan is putting out the welcome mat," said Jean
Prewitt, president and chief executive officer of the Independent Film and Television Alliance.
In April, 2008, Michigan enacted a 40 percent refundable or transferable tax credit on money spent on film and TV productions in the state. Producers get an extra 2 percent back if the expense occurs in one of 103 communities statewide. The credit also applies to wages paid to workers who are Michigan residents.
The credit is in the form of a rebate check on all production expenses in the state and is issued regardless of whether the movie is shown at theaters or on television. For example, if expenses in the state amount to $10 million, the production company would get approximately $4 million back from the state.
The credit is granted to almost every expense, including actors' salaries, but has a $2 million cap per individual. Producers also can get a 25 percent credit against taxes on industry infrastructure - such as studios and sound stages - and 50 percent back on money they spend to train workers on the job."Right now, there are 28 films either in preproduction, postproduction, or that have wrapped. Last year, we had 35 films completed," said Ken Droz, communications manager for the Michigan Film Office, which oversees the incentive program.
Two films were shot in Michigan during all of 2007, before the incentives were enacted.
Jamie Vick, an independent film producer and an instructor at Monroe County Community College, is teaching a class on movie-equipment setup.
(
THE BLADE/LORI KING
)
|
"We're giving them a huge financial incentive to come, but this is an extremely mobile industry," Mr. Droz said. For Michigan residents, moving into the movie business can provide not only a new skill set, but also work that - unlike heavy manufacturing - "is versatile, it's mobile, and it's not geographic-dependent."
The incentives have sprouted fledgling studio production facilities in southeast Michigan. Unity Studios is developing a $146 million production facility in Allen Park, about 30 miles north of Monroe, on the site of a former Montgomery Ward warehouse complex.
In Detroit itself, the former temporary casino owned by MGM Grand is to become home to the Detroit Center Studios; about 20 miles north, in Pontiac, Motown Motion Pictures LLC plans to invest about $70 million in a 600,000-square-foot development with nine sound stages.
Ohio's efforts at luring filmmakers haven't been as successful as those of its neighbor to the north, but Ohio's incentives - which recently were upgraded - aren't nearly as lucrative as Michigan's.
Ohio offers a 25 percent tax credit, up to a maximum of $5 million per production. The state also sets a limit on how much can be credited overall; next year that amount is $10 million. For filmmakers, the difference can be tens of millions of dollars - which can make or break a film financially before it ever gets to the screen.
"The type of credit [Michigan] put in place is considered the dream credit," said Ms. Prewitt of the Independent Film group.
"For an independent filmmaker, it's the type that you can turn to a bank or investor and monetize that credit. You know what it's worth, and you know that you'll get it in cash."
The incentive, which went active just as the credit markets were freezing up, helps get projects, she said.
Michigan's incentive package had an almost immediate impact: The script of the Clint Eastwood film Gran Torino was rewritten, moving the setting from Minneapolis to Detroit, to take advantage of the incentives.
A study this year by the Center for Economic Analysis at Michigan State University found that, in the first eight months that Michigan's incentive package was in place, 32 productions spent $65.4 million that qualified for the credit.
Of that number, $25.1 million was wages and salaries and $40.3 million was spent on local goods and services, the study found.
The production companies had 927 days of filming in the state and employed 2,763 Michigan residents, the study found.
Using economic multipliers, the industry added an estimated 1,102 full-time year-round jobs and $53.8 million in wages and salaries to the state's economy in 2008.
Steven Miller, one of the study's co-authors, estimated that if current trends continue, total production expenditures will climb to almost $188 million annually by 2012 and produce 2,922 jobs with annual income of almost $190 million.
The total addition to the state's annual economy, with multipliers, is estimated at almost $336 million.
Despite the excitement of having big film stars such as Robert DeNiro, Clint Eastwood, and Hillary Swank running around the state, the economic impact represents less than 0.1 percent of Michigan's nearly $383 billion overall economy.
Yet for those who have struggled among Michigan's highest-in-the-nation 15.2 percent unemployment rate, the influx of movie, television, and digital media production represents new employment avenues.
"This is a perfect opportunity," argues Monroe resident Jamie Vick, an independent film producer who this fall is helping others break into the business with a class at Monroe County Community College.
The $1,700 class will teach students how to be a "grip" - a member of the crew on a movie set who are responsible for lighting, scaffolds, ladders, and other heavy equipment.
Mr. Vick said working as a grip, although an entry-level job that might start at $17 an hour, can lead to a career with pay as high as $120,000 a year.
"Michigan has been so far down on the employment ladder, and there have been so few opportunities for skilled tradesmen to work in anything other than what they've done," Mr. Vick said. "I would hope there would be a lot of interest in it given how rapidly [the industry] is moving in Michigan."
And that move is already producing opportunities.
Metro Detroit this month is host to production of the first big-budget blockbuster to be made in Michigan since the new tax incentives passed. Wolverine Productions Delaware LLC is shooting a remake of Red Dawn, the 1984 jingoistic cult classic in which a group of teenagers leads an armed insurgency against Cuban and Russian forces that have invaded the United States.
In the current production, the invaders are Chinese and Russian, and the high school mascot that the insurgents invoke when they attack - "Wolverine!" - carries a special relevance in the Wolverine state. The cast includes Toledoan Adrianne Palicki, a Whitmer High School graduate who has the lead female role in the film.
Peter Silbermann, a spokesman for the production company shooting Red Dawn, said that about 150 Michigan residents are working on the project, including a number of Michigan actors. Hundreds more local residents will appear as paid extras in the film. Shooting is expected to continue through early December on what is expected to be a $40 million film.
"This is an ideal location for this film, with or without the tax credit," Mr. Silbermann said. "Regardless of the incentive, it was a place we were very seriously looking at; the incentive just made it that much more ideal."
Red Dawn is to be released Sept. 24, 2010.
Shooting films in Michigan is not new; it's just the scale that has changed.
According to the Michigan Film Office, it took 42 years - from 1946 to 1988 - to equal the number of productions that were shot in Michigan just last year. From 1959's Anatomy of a Murder to the 1979 Christopher Reeve drama Somewhere in Time, which filmed in the Grand Hotel on Mackinaw Island, Michigan has only occasionally been on Hollywood's map.
And most of the films that were shot in Michigan prior to the incentives were set there, such as Flint native Michael Moore's breakout 1989 film, Roger and Me, and Chelsea, Mich., resident Jeff Daniels' 2000 deer hunting classic, Escanaba in da Moonlight.
But postincentive, Michigan is substituting for other locations, the Film Office's Mr. Droz said, including New Orleans, Maine, and Berkeley, Calif.
It's not just feature films that can benefit from the incentive program. Television productions and video game producers can benefit as well. The HBO series Hung is shot and set in Detroit and is taking advantage of the state's incentives.
Christine LeMaire is the co-producer of the first television sitcom to be shot in Michigan since the incentives were enacted. The Wannabes, starring Savvy, is a show aimed at preteens that is shooting in a former high school in Howell, about 60 miles north of Adrian.
"We were planning on filming the episodes in Texas, but because of the incentives and this high school availability, we really had to move the production here," Ms. LeMaire explained. The live-action comedy, which is set in Detroit, has a $10 million budget.
"The best thing about it is the location and the shooting, and the people are so wonderful to work with. Finding talent has just been wonderful," Ms. LeMaire said, adding that many of her cast are Michigan-based actors.
"Some of the aspects that we weren't counting on were some of the strict union regulations, but we're getting used to them."
Contact Larry P. Vellequette at:
lvellequette@theblade.com
or 419-724-6091.
Permanent Link
|
|
 |
|
Search
advertisement
