Comments

1

Very exciting news for the industry! Now, if we can only convince the legislature to raise the cap on our pitiful $3.5mm per year film production incentive.

2

What @1 said.

It's up to the Legislature to realize film dollars get spent all around the state, and that BC will be happy to take all the film business they can get if we don't play.

3

@2:

Washington FilmWorks, the state office that administers our film production incentive fund, schedules annual industry outreach days when the legislature is in-session. We've been making this same argument to legislators for many years, and have presented them with the numbers. But, in the past couple of years the focus has been just keeping the program alive, as it was due to sunset in 2019. We did manage to get a 10 year commitment from the Legislature during that session, but convincing them to increase the incentive has been a hard slog (pun intended), in part because of the peculiarities of our tax code, which doesn't allow for direct industry subsidies, so we have this convoluted system where companies contribute by committing a portion of their B&O tax obligation to the fund. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to sell them on the idea of increasing that amount, and as a result we rank at or very near the bottom in terms of states that offer incentives. Hell, Montana has a more generous incentive program than Washington, and they've reaped the benefits of doing so.

5

Soundstages aren't the future: The Volume is the future. This enterprise is doomed to fail.

7

@4:

King County is looking at creating their own incentive, which would be separate from the current $3.5 mm state incentive, so that would provide some additional cash to lure in production.

Vancouver didn't really build up their incentive program and infrastructure until 1995, when the Canadian federal government enacted the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit (CPTC) and the Canadian Film or Video Production Services Tax Credit (PSTC), at which point the B.C. provincial government kicked in with their own supplemental incentives programs, although they've had a film office up there since the late 1970's. Up until the late '90's there was a fair amount of production going on up there, but much of it was either Canadian-based or international content. Since the tax incentives were implemented, production - and corresponding revenue - has skyrocketed in the province, to the point that Vancouver is now the third larges production center in North America after L.A. and New York.

8

@5/6:

The Volume is certainly an innovative new technology, but as we have seen time and again over the 130 history of cinema it's ultimately about telling stories people are interested in seeing, and that they can relate to on a personal, emotional level. For all its novelty Volume is simply another tool in the film maker's kit: if it meets their needs they'll use it, but it's not ever going to completely replace traditional film production technique, just as innovations in digital audio technology have never fully eliminated good, old-fashioned (and generally much higher quality) analog vinyl records.

9

@5/6:
If The Volume is the future, then soundstages are...
...still also the future, obviously, because where else are you gonna fit a 20 foot tall 75 foot wide circular high-brightness LED wall/ceiling and accompanying computer equipment? Plus there's the wiring required to power the thing, construction and storage space for sets, and most importantly, soundproofing (AKA basically the entire point of a soundstage). A garage? Even one of those 10-car McMansion monstrosities couldn't handle all of that. Come on.
@8:
You're sort of right, but you're mostly wrong. When it comes to on-set production, The Volume is the future, it really is. No one ever recorded on vinyl.

10

This is a magnum leap in the right direction, thank you Mr. Constantine, let's encourage film makers to produce films here. Once again, we're getting schooled by the Canadians, who have a robust governmental program--the National Film Board of Canada--to encourage and subsidize film production. For example, David and Justin Cronenberg's films are usually produced with assistance from the National Film Board of Canada. This could provide a welcome antidote to the post-COVID doldrums for the Washington State economy. Any time we hear news of real estate being reimagined rather than turned into condominiums, that is a good thing. The peripheral benefits from these high-dollar productions would truly benefit the local economy, as the author relates. This initiative to encourage film production dovetails with journalist Charles Mudede's theory of a declining Boeing, with systemic management and safety failures, and the need to facilitate the generation of new businesses to bolster our COVID impaired economy, although business is improving every day, along with the warmer spring weather. For example, Boeing has had a recent spate of electrical system failures on the 737 Max, which has led to the grounding of some jets, further adding to Boeing 737 Max safety woes. At any rate, we must diversify our economy as much as possible to protect livelihoods, although Boeing has treated our state like a cheap screw, so that in and of itself should provide motivation for economic diversification.

Pollysexual respects the fact that many dear readers are stuck at home, playing with themselves and waiting for the COVID-19 debacle to abate, so pollysexual promises to put in more paragraph breaks to make these blurbs easier to read, and to reduce fits of rage from some of our cabin-fevered, unhinged fellow posters.


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