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Wooing of the film industry
By Sally Boswell
Published November 12, 2009
Hollywood may call itself the “film capital of the world,” but not all movies get made there. From Austin to Philadelphia, Shreveport to Albuquerque, film companies are packing up and moving inland in search of locales in which to film, and if the people at the Northeast Texas Regional Film Commission have anything to say about it, that film company could be setting up shop soon right here in Northeast Texas.
“Not all of Texas looks like Austin,” said NETRFC representative Lynne Spivey in a meeting Tuesday at the Chamber of Commerce Community Room. “Northeast Texas can pass for a lot of different areas, and more and more low budget, independent film projects are discovering that.”
The Northeast Texas Regional Film Commission promotes 21 counties in “the right corner of Texas,” providing film industry information to contacts in the seven sub-regions that make up the area while relaying information about the area back to filmmakers across the country. Lamar, Delta and Hopkins counties have been designated Sub-region 1. Red River County is part of Sub-region 2, which also includes Franklin, Titus and Camp counties.
“Most of the film commissions in Texas operate in a specific metroplex area or larger city such as Amarillo, San Antonio, Brownsville, Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth or Houston,” Spivey said. “We’re unusual in that we are only one of two film commissions in the state that tries to market an area for multiple counties.”
“The only purpose of the NETRFC is to market these 21 counties to the film industry itself,” Spivey said. “We are here to promote you and to market you as best we can.”
Spivey, Lee Ellen Benjamin and the commission’s executive director, Ron Hollomon, spent several hours visiting with more than a dozen Paris residents whose businesses or interests could benefit from the arrival of filmmakers in Northeast Texas, including hoteliers, retailers, developers and members of the local media.
“The kinds of films we are going to get in this area are the small-budget, independent films,” Spivey said. “Steven Spielberg is not going to come to our front door anytime soon and a $1 million project is no where near a $75 million project, but it is still clean money that comes into your community and regenerates itself in the community.”
“These film companies come to your town, they make their movie, they leave their money here, but they don’t leave a footprint,” added Benjamin. “There’s no infrastructure that’s required, generally, and they don’t pollute. They just leave their money and that’s exactly the kind of business you want here.”
The film industry in Texas is growing, said the NETRFC representatives, and state incentive programs were increased in the past legislative session. On April 23, Gov. Rick Perry signed House Bill 873, which promotes the entertainment industry in Texas by providing new, expanded incentives for the film, television, video and digital interactive media production industries.
“If you are doing a project in the state of Texas and you could avail yourself of every facet of the incentives allotted from the state, you could get a return at times of 29 percent,” Spivey said. “That doesn’t match the 46 percent available in Michigan as that state tries to offset the loss of manufacturing they are dealing with, but 29 percent is a far cry from the 5 percent Texas offered only last year.”
“We have a particular lure in our area,” Benjamin said. “There is also an extra 2.5 percent incentive for using an underserved area of the state, as opposed to the larger cities. Northeast Texas is considered one of the underserved areas.”
The NETRFC operates with monies contributed from communities in its service area, and Paris is now among those contributors.
“Here at the Chamber, we heard about the work that the NETRFC was doing,” said Becky Semple, with the Paris/Lamar County Visitors and Convention Council. “Last year Mindy Moree (Chamber director) and I went to Jefferson to one of the quarterly meetings to find out more.
“We were excited by what we learned,” Semple said. “Compared to some of the other initiatives we’re involved in, such as making Paris a Texas Retirement Community, this costs us next to nothing. It’s a no-brainer.”
Semple was delighted with the turnout of local people Tuesday for the meeting.
“There was a lot of interest from the community in this,” she added. “I believe we can grow this and greatly benefit our community.”
The next step in the process, according to Semple, is learning how best to get a production company interested in coming to the area.
“We have to learn how to court them.”
As part of the preparation to doing business with filmmakers, NETRFC offers a number of programs including Film Friendly Texas, a series of workshops providing training and ongoing guidance on how communities can effectively deal with on-location filming and to put their best foot forward in marketing their resources.
“We urge each of you, whatever your capacity is in your community to investigate Film Friendly Texas, and to learn what you can do to prepare to interface with this industry,” Spivey said.
The NETRFC, in partnership with the Texas Workforce Training Program, also offers educational opportunities to help Texans develop skills necessary to obtain employment in the film industry.
“We’ve joined the Film Friendly Program,” Semple said. “They are considering holding some of their workshops and classes here in Paris. The classes are free and open to everyone.”
Another important aspect of the NETRFC’s marketing is the photo library found on their Web site.
“We need the people of this area to send us pictures of what’s here,” Benjamin said. “We need your help to make people outside of this 21-county area understand what you have to offer.”
The NETRFC Web site’s photo library has hundred of photos taken in cities and towns across the region, allowing location scouts to quickly and easily find what they are looking for, including houses and other structures, towers, cemeteries, landscapes and vistas and bodies of water.
“It’s not always the prettiest building they want for movies,” added Spivey. “Sometimes, they want a location, warts and all, if it’s the look they want.”
The library also includes sections on vintage vehicles, railroads and industrial areas, as well as annual events such as festivals, parades or athletic events that could be used to help filmmakers avoid the cost of staging such events themselves.
“The more photos on the Web site, the greater the chance of success,” Spivey said.
“Lots of people who work in the industry are from Northeast Texas,” Hollomon said. “There’s a mystique here. We want to advertise that for you and we want to help you market this area.”
“Don’t think that Paris and the Red River Valley is not a place that other people want to be,” he added. “They just need to know it is here.”
For more information on the NETRFC and Paris involvement in the programs they offer, call the commission’s local representative, Becky Semple, at the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce, 903-784-2501.
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