Michigan film industry rises and falls as tax credits come and go

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 10:30:00 -0600

When Michigan's auto factories started to close, many wondered what to do with them. The state decided to try and turn them into movie studios, which worked for a time. Until the tax credits ran out. Now those new studios are empty former factories once more.

Philo

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 08:43:05 -0600

Regarding your December 7 piece on Michigan incentives and incentives around the country. I don't believe your contributor has the whole story certainly not for Michigan incentives. First of all Michigan incentives are not scrapped they are capped but they are still providing work for Michigan-based film crews and crews coming in from out of state as well . Michigan has been a production center for over 50 years which has allowed it to build that infrastructure and people a crew base that helped them from commercials to jump into feature films.
Our purpose in creating the 42% incentive was to wow people and it did just that and it allowed us to begin the build that we wanted to have that would allow us to sustain within five years.

Producers or Michigan taxpayers rather were not responsible for over 40% because iif you do the math, when producers brought in their crew when they brought in materials from out-of-state the tax incentive for them became somewhere closer to 32% not 42. that very rarely happened over the course of the time that the original incentive plan was in place.

We had a strong group of people supporting us from the Michigan Production Alliance to a number of other stakeholders who came into Michigan with certainly the thought of making money but also certainly to help the state of Michigan grow its industry.

Michigan Production Alliance was involved in the incentive push well before the cameo appearance by Michael Binder. We were building a crew base that was very strong developing camera assistants, developing production designers and script supervisors.
Sadly what the governor did was simply cut it off at the knees which first of all killed trust - and many shows in the hopper just left within days of the announcement. ...and then began a slow exitus personnel to other states where they could work.

Had he done it in a different more thoughtful way , we could have ratcheted down the incentives as we had intended to do and maintain a certain level of trust. Trust and relationships are everything in this industry and that would've helped Michigan sustain what we were developing - instead now we have only small films coming here which doesn't help the indigenous crew members. Instead for vendors and crew members, we are bled. In both our lower wagers and market issues on equipment rates. Understand also that Michigan had to jump into the game because the playing field had not been level for some time. it became level for several years. realistically our model has to change. I personally would like to see a state wide incentive which is based on the states promotion of the film industry like it promotes it's other economic development engines. Or Something like the American jobs creation act that was begun under George Bush in 2005 which allows producers to gain tax benefits at the backend a national program.

One of the big problems with Michigan's original incentive was that commercials were supposed to be included in it which were and always will be our bread and butter. That would've helped sustain studios and production companies within the state of Michigan, indigenous facilities and crew would've benefited a great deal more than through feature films alone.
We hope we can convince the state to include commercials in some kind of a model that includes commercials through economic development promotion in that way we can sustain a greater number of people in Michigan.

PRI: Public Radio International

Michigan film industry rises and falls as tax credits come and go

Philo