The 5 Pervasive Issues Preventing the Emergence of New US Film Hubs
If you’re a filmmaker, you probably already know a lot of other filmmakers in your area. If you don’t, you should. That’s one reason why film community events are absolutely vital for the independent film industry. It’s far from the only reason that communities of independent filmmakers are vital for your success as an independent filmmaker.
I’ve been involved with a few film community organizations ranging from Producer Foundry to Global Film Ventures, and even the Institute for International Film Finance. I’ve also spoken at organizations across the country. From the experience of running more than 150 events and speaking for a few dozen others, I’ve noticed some commonalities across many burgeoning independent film communities, so I thought I would share some of my observations as to why most of them aren’t growing as quickly as they should. Without further ado, here are the 5 pervasive problems preventing the growth of regional film communities.
Lack of Resources
It’s no secret that most independent films could use more money. It’s true for film communities and hubs as well. In general, most of these community organizations have little to no money unless they’re tied to a larger film society or film festival. Unfortunately being tied to such an organization often prevents the work of community building due to the time and resources involved in the day-to-day operations of running a film society or the massive commitment that comes with running a film festival.
Compounding the issues with a lack of resources is that a community organization built to empower a regional film community isn’t something that you could raise equity financing from investors. Projects like this are much better funded using pages from the non-profit playbook. There are organizations looking to write grants specifically for film organizations seeking to empower communities. You can find out more about the grant writing process in this blog below.
RELATED: Filmmakers! 5 Tips for Successful Grantwriting.
While local film commissions do provide some support to locals, their primary mandate is generally built for a different purpose that I’ll discuss in the next of my 5 points.
Most tax incentives emphasize attracting Large Scale Productions, not building local hubs
Most film tax incentives are heavily or sometimes even entirely oriented on attracting outside productions as a means to bring more revenue to the city, state, region, or territory. This is understandable, as many film commissions or offices are organized under the tourism bureau or occasionally the Chamber of Commerce. Both of those organizations have a primary focus on attracting big spenders to the local area in order to boost the economy.
RELATED: The Basics of Film Tax Incentives
This mandate isn’t necessarily antithetical to the goal of building local film communities. There is nearly always a local staffing requirement for these incentives, and you can’t build an industrial community if no one has work. Some of the best incentives I’ve seen have a certain portion of their spending that is required to go to community growth, as San Francisco’s City Film Commission had when I last checked. Given that the focus of the film industry is focused on attracting outside production, there is often a vacuum left when it comes to building the local community and infrastructure as a long-term project.
Additionally, given that film productions are highly mobile by their very nature using tax incentives to consistently attract large-scale projects is almost always a race to the bottom very quickly. If a production can simply say to Colorado that they’ll get a better deal in New Jersey, then the incentive in Colorado fails its primary purpose. Eventually, these states or regions will continue a race to the bottom that fails to bring any meaningful economic benefit to the citizens of the state. While the studies I’ve seen on this often seem reductive and significantly undervalue the soft benefits of film production on the image and economy of a state, the end result is clear. If all states over-compete, eventually the legislatures will repeal the tax incentives. After that, outside productions will dry up.
When this happens, local filmmakers are left out in the cold. The big productions that put food on the table are gone, and there’s no meaningful local infrastructure left to fill the void that the large studio productions left.
Creating a film community is a long-term project with Short Term Funding.
It takes decades of consistent building to create a new film production hub. People often have the misconception that Georgia popped up overnight, and this isn’t true. While the tax incentive grew the industry relatively quickly on a governmental timescale, I believe the tax incentive was in place for nearly a decade ahead of the release. Georgia’s growth was greatly aided by local Filmmaker Tyler Perry’s continual championing of the region as a film hub.
Most of the funding apparatuses available for the growth of film communities are primarily oriented toward short-term gains. That makes long-term growth a difficult process, but if cities and regions outside of NY, LA, and ATL are to grow it needs to be a part of the conversation.
There are some organizations out there pushing to build long-term viable film communities outside of those major hubs. Notably, the Albuquerque Film and Music Experience has a great lineup of speakers for their event in a few weeks. I’m one of those speakers, so if you’re in the area check it out, and check out this podcast I did with them yesterday.
It’s hard to bring community leaders together
As I said eat the top, I’ve been involved with and even run several community organizations. One consistent theme I’ve noticed is that most community leaders are very reticent to work with each other in a way that doesn’t benefit them more than anyone else. This means that one issue I’ve seen consistently is that while there are disparate factions of the larger film community throughout most regions it’s nearly impossible to bring them together to build something big enough to truly build a long-term community.
Most filmmakers and film community leaders are much happier being the king of their own small hill than a lord in a larger kingdom.
Filmmaking is a creative pursuit, and it requires some degree of narcissism to truly excel. This is amplified when you run a local film community. Sayer’s Law states: “Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics because the stakes are so low.” If you replace the word “Academic” with “Filmmaking” can be said for the issue facing most film communities. Call it Yennie’s Law, if you like. #Sarcasm, #Kinda.
I discussed this in some detail with Lorraine Montez and Carey Rose O'Connell of the New Mexico Film Incubator in episode 2 of the Movie Moolah podcast, linked below.
The industry connections for large-scale finance and distribution generally aren’t local.
If you’ve read Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant’s book Writing Movies for Fun and Profit you’ll already know that LA is the hub of the industry, and if you want to pitch you need to be there. Given the fact I live in Philadelphia, I believe it should be fairly clear I disagree with the particulars of the notion the overall sentiment remains true. Also, if you haven’t read it click that link and get it. It’s a great read. (Affiliate link, I get a few pennies if you buy. Recommendation stands regardless of how you get it.)
If you want to make a film bigger than at most a few million dollars, you’re going to need connections to financiers and distributors with large bank accounts. You can find the distributors at film markets, but all of the institutional film industry money is in LA. While you may be able to raise a few million from local investors, it’s really hard and it is an issue facing the growth of independent film communities nationwide.
Another issue is around the knowledge of the film business and the logistics of keeping a community engaged and organized. While I can’t help too much with the latter, I can help you and your community organizers on the knowledge of the film industry with my FREE film business resource Pack! It’s got a free e-book, free macroeconomic white paper, free deck template, free festival brochure template, contact tracking template, and a while lot more. Just that is more than a 100$ value, plus you also get monthly content digests segmented by topic so you can keep growing your film industry knowledge on a viable schedule. Click the button below!
As I said earlier, I’m speaking at AFMX this year. If you like this content and you’d like to have me speak to your organization, use the button below to send me an email.
