Panavision Marching Into Georgia with Atlanta Office

Although several states are pulling away the welcome mat for Hollywood filming with limiting the amount of tax credits offered, there is still plenty of southern hospitality in Georgia – enough for Panavision to open a new camera rental office in Atlanta. This is the fourth camera rental facility in the United States outside of the company’s Woodland Hills headquarters, all located in states where film and television production are growing and creating a base of experienced crew members. Georgia has been a popular state for filming but the addition of tax incentives for the feature films and television series made there has brought more work, including the first season of the breakout cable hit, “The Walking Dead.” Panavision has a strategy of going where their customers are, be it domestically or overseas.When cheaper costs lured filmmakers to Eastern Europe, Panavision responded with an office in Prague. John Schrimpf, vice president of U.S. regional operations, tracks where productions have been going and stores that information in a database. “I have friends in the studios whose job it is to track incentives and they have been encouraging me to open an office there,” Schrimpf said. Seven employees will staff the Atlanta location to start off with, and offer both film and digital cameras. In the future, there may be crane rental available as well but likely from a different location, Schrimpf said. With a central location in the South, the office is expected to also serve film and television production in Florida, the Carolinas and Tennessee. Crawford Post Production, Paskal Lighting, and camera, equipment and soundstage provider PC&E all have a presence in or near Atlanta. Screen Gems is in the process of building a 37,000-square-foot divided stage in the city. Panavision had an office in Atlanta that was closed in 1998 due to a lack of business. That was “a dark day” for production in the state that had bounced back. Economic impact During the 2010 fiscal year, production work generated $1.4 billion in economic impact, said Lee Thomas, director of film for the Georgia Film, Music & Digital Entertainment Office The issue of runaway production is a touchy one in California, home to Hollywood and the major studios. While location filming outside the state has been standard in the industry for decades, it has been the financial benefits of going elsewhere that has been the draw for producers looking to keep costs down. Five years ago the main villain was Canada, where incentives and the cheap U.S. dollar combined to bring production over the border. In the U.S., more and more states began to jump on the tax break bandwagon. At the start of 2010 there were more than 40 states offering incentives of some sort. Schrimpf was involved with Texas adopting and maintaining its incentive program, one of the reasons he received the Lone Star International Film Festival Commitment to Texas Award. With the recession causing many states to tackle burdensome deficits, the popularity of the incentives has now come into question. New Jersey and Kansas ended their tax credit programs, and Wisconsin and Rhode Island limited the amount offered. Scandals connected to the subsidies hit Michigan and Louisiana. Just as Schrimpf tracks production locations, so he does with comments about the incentive programs throughout the country. While there has been pushback in other states, he said that was not the case in Atlanta. “There has been little if any disgruntled comments coming from Georgia,” Schrimpf said. Georgia perks The Georgia Entertainment Industry Investment Act became law in 2008 and offers an across the board flat tax credit of 20 percent based on a minimum investment of $500,000 on qualified production. An additional 10 percent credit is earned by using an animated Georgia logo on approved projects. The credits can apply to video game development and animation in addition to traditional projects of feature films, television series and commercials. “It’s not the most ambitious on paper; others have higher percentages but there is diversity here,” Thomas said. “There are the mountains and the beach. There is a deep crew base and a lot of equipment.” With a local infrastructure in place that means more locals working on productions. When below-the-line crews can be found close by and don’t have to be imported in, that makes tax credits more valuable, Schrimpf said. “If you cannot find (crews) locally, the incentives are not going to mean much,” he added.