Pop quiz, hotshot: You want to make a major motion picture, but you don’t want to pay the production prices of California or New York.What do you do? What do you do?
Time’s up, pal.
Answer: You go to North Carolina, the nation’s third-largest movie-producing state.
That’s right. For years, the Old North State has been attracting studios to its mountains and beaches, its plains and sand hills, its cities and small towns for hundreds of movies, including blockbusters like The Hunt for Red October, Forrest Gump, Dirty Dancing, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I and II, mind you), The Fugitive and The Color Purple.
It’s not just the big budget movies, either. Dawson’s Creek, the (for better or worse) phenomenally popular WB series about and for angst-ridden teens, is one of several TV shows and small-screen movies taped in North Carolina, along with countless commercials, promotional videos, etc.
Since 1980, according to the North Carolina Film Commission, the state has been the scene or part of the scene for nearly 600 movies and six network television series, which have reaped $5.5 billion in production revenue. The state has more studio facilities (seven) and soundstages (30) than any other state except California (yup, even more than New York and Florida, home of Disney).
But times have recently gotten tougher for North Carolina’s film and TV industry. While the state is still way ahead of the other 47 states in annual production revenue, according to the US Department of Commerce, international competition is taking a significant bite out of North Carolina’s studio appeal.
Estimated production revenue in 1993, according to the film commission, was an all-time state high of $504.3 million. But in 2000, the last year figures are available, revenue was less than half that.
Those taking this drop-off in on-screen dramatic work hardest are local actors. There’s still work to be had — and there’s always traditional theater — but there’s not as much movie and TV work as there was only a few years ago.
People probably laughed when then-Gov. Jim Hunt started the North Carolina Film Office in 1980: “North Carolina? It’s got great scenery and good weather, yeah, but c’mon, it doesn’t even have an international airport.” Or something along those derisive lines.
According to its director, Bill Arnold, the new Raleigh-based office had no staff, equipment or budget. But it grew, and so did the film and TV industry in North Carolina — and no one’s laughed at it in a long, long time. In 1980, according to Arnold, there was no film activity in the state. By 1986, North Carolina had risen to its current third-place spot.
“It seemed so far-fetched in the 1970s that Jim Hunt had trouble getting funding [for the film office],” Arnold says. “Few people realized North Carolina’s potential role then.”
The film office became the North Carolina Film Commission. North Carolina’s reputation as a film and TV mecca, nurtured and trumpeted by Arnold’s office, eventually drew more than 400 production and support service companies, as well as around 1,500 local professionals available to producers to work on sets. The soundstages and studios popped up, and North Carolina now boasts the biggest film studio facility east of California: EUE/Screen Gems Studios — North Carolina (Frank Capra Jr., president) in Wilmington, the capital of the state’s film and TV success.
“We kind of hit the wave as it was going up,” Arnold says.
The production revenue kept increasing along with the newfound reputation, topping $100 million annually in 1983 and never again dropping below that mark, according to the film commission. In the following year, the state was the site of 12 major productions, a hefty number that would seem paltry by 2000, when 81 major productions did work in the state. This number included 19 feature films, six movies-of-the-week, 56 TV episodes and several commercials.
What gives?
North Carolina’s a bargain, that’s what, especially with the facilities and professional pool already in place.
Arnold and others cultivated North Carolina as a welcoming place economically for studios and networks. Would-be producers could save up to 83 percent, for instance, on the state’s 6 percent sales and use tax on items purchased or rented for filming in North Carolina. And it never hurts that North Carolina enjoys good weather almost year-round and has a diversity of geography (mountains, plains, cities, hills, beaches, islands) that is surely the envy of many states. (Go ahead, try it: Name a distinguishing feature of, say, Wyoming or Kansas, besides flatness. Exactly.)
North Carolina’s future as a filming destination is assured, for the time being. Things lately, however, have looked sort of bleak, especially if you’re an actor. Blame it on Canada — mostly.
Simply put, “Canada gave the people a way to shoot their films much cheaper than they could in North Carolina,” says Jackie Pressley, a theatrical agent based in Cary.
Pressley says film and TV work for her dozens of local clients has been harder to find the past couple of years.
That’s because in 1997 and 1998, the Canadian government started to offer incentives like tax credits to television and moviemakers. The incentives paid off quickly, according to a December 2001 report by the Center for Entertainment Industry Data and Research. The report’s title says it all: “The Migration of Feature Film Production from the US to Canada.” (Go to www.ceidr.org for the full report.) That migration, the report states, caused the loss of 22,400 industry-related jobs in the United States from 1998 through 2000.
“After actually experiencing a 22 percent decline in production volume (and a loss of market share to the United States) for the 1998 and 1999 release years, US production in Canada exploded to unprecedented levels during 1999 for the 2000 release year,” the report stated.
From 1998 through 2000, annual production spending in Canada for US theatrical releases increased 148 percent, according to the report, and the average budget of feature films shot in Canada by American-based creators jumped 48 percent.
The Canadian federal help is competition enough. But couple it with individual provinces’ efforts to lure studios, the cheaper labor there, and, perhaps most importantly, the American dollar going much further in Canada (more than one and a half times further), and, understandably, North Carolina has suffered.
Particularly hard hit are local actors unable to hop flights to Toronto, for instance, to land a brief gig. (That city’s mayor told the Associated Press in February: “We’re Hollywood North. There’s no two ways about it.”)
Rasool J’han is a successful actress living in Raleigh. She’s planning to move to Los Angeles by year’s end, though, partly as a wise career move and partly because of the recent Canada-caused falloff in acting jobs here.
She gives a telling example.
“I think in the last three years at least, I’d go to Wilmington at least two times a month,” J’han says.
She would go there specifically because she was asked to audition for in-state projects. In April, she went down to audition for the movie version of Cold Mountain, the best-selling novel by UNC-Chapel Hill alumnus Charles Frazier. It’s to be filmed partly in North Carolina, where the novel’s events took place.
“That was the first time in one and a half years I’d been called down,” J’han adds.
In other words, from dozens of auditions a year in Wilmington to one in 18 months.
The state cannot fall back on a New York City or a Los Angeles-Hollywood and wait out the lean times. Pretty much what No. 3 can do is continue to tout itself, offering the same enticements, and hope for a turnaround soon. Meanwhile, some estimates have Canada and other nations receiving more than $10 billion (US) in production revenue over the past three years that very well would have gone to the States.
TV movies-of-the-week and other lower-cost ($1 million to $3 million range) features being gobbled up by Canada are especially hurting North Carolina. In 1997, according to Arnold, the state was the site of 28 movies-of-the-week. Last year? None.
Don’t call it a wrap quite yet, though.
“We’re still a good $100 million ahead of the rest of the pack,” Arnold says, meaning that the remaining 47 states have a ways to go in catching North Carolina in annual production revenue. He notes that recent films like Black Knight, Domestic Disturbance and A Walk to Remember were shot in North Carolina. And Charlotte alone has seen its share of cinematic action, with such films as Juwanna Mann, Shallow Hal and Black Dog being at least partly shot here.
Competition from other countries and the national economic downturn are also partially to blame. The state government too is facing tough financial times, with record budget shortfalls that can eat into the wants and needs of the film commission.
But mostly it’s Canada. Still, the show must go on. State officials continue to put the best spin on things, citing, for example, the 2000 production revenue numbers.
“These figures are especially encouraging when you consider the competition we’re getting from Canada, where government subsidies and the rate of exchange give filmmakers significantly reduced costs,” NC Commerce Secretary Jim Fain said in a statement issued by the film commission two years ago. “An increased level of activity here helped keep us ahead of most other states, and we’ll keep working to maintain that edge.”
Perhaps the brightest silver lining for North Carolina is that no state, except maybe California, can compete with Canada these days.
“[The] subsidies up there are so tremendous,” Arnold says, “that no state can match them.”
This article originally appeared in The Spectator.
This article appears in Jul 31 – Aug 6, 2002.
