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And … Action!

By Teresa Masterson

The scene is set outside a Philadelphia rowhouse. A man sits on a bench in the early morning, reading from notes on a legal pad, waiting. A young boy emerges from one of the houses across the street, puts on an oversized pair of glasses and looks around nervously. As the boy darts around the corner with the man hurrying behind him in pursuit, the Philadelphia skyline comes into full view.

The boy is Haley Joel Osment, the man is Bruce Willis, the movie is The Sixth Sense, and the street is St. Alban’s Place in South Philadelphia. And that one simple scene, while taking only a few hours to shoot, required the payment of actors’ and crew salaries, hotels, food and equipment rentals, all of which brought hundreds of thousands of dollars into the state of Pennsylvania in just one day.

That was 1999. Since then, the stream of revenue flowing into Pennsylvania from the film industry has swelled considerably thanks to a competitive tax incentive program, an ambitious film office, and the wildly successful filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, whose hometown loyalty brought attention to the state’s rich location resources.

Shyamalan’s followed The Sixth Sense with five major motion pictures, most recently The Happening, all of which were filmed in the Philadelphia region; his next production is The Last Airbender, set to start filming in late fall.

More and more, Hollywood is coming to Pennsylvania to shoot. Earlier this year, Director Michael Bay filmed much of Transformers 2 in the Philadelphia region, and Shawshank Redemption writer and director Frank Darabont is about to begin shooting his new film, Law Abiding Citizen, in Philadelphia this fall.

The push to get filmmakers to shoot their movies in Pennsylvania started in 1992, when then-Mayor of Philadelphia Ed Rendell helped create a tax incentive program for film companies in response to lucrative Canadian and European incentives that were taking film productions overseas.

Rendell’s initial program provided $10 million each year to filmmakers on a first come, first serve basis. Although the program brought more films into the state than usual, the money would dry up fast and early each year, and as soon as the money was gone, so were the film shoots.

But in 2004, lawmakers began reforming the system and created a tax incentive program, which awarded a 20 percent tax credit to film productions that spent 60 percent or more of their budget in the state. This was followed in 2006 with the Pennsylvania Film Production Grant Initiative, which provides grants of up to $2 million or 20 percent of production expenses.

Despite these new incentives, the total amount of grants and credits was not to exceed $10 million, which limited the number and size of films Pennsylvania could entice. That changed last year when lawmakers upped the total amount to $75 million and increased the tax credits to 25 percent of production expenses.

In other words, a film company that spends $1 million in Pennsylvania will get $250,000 in tax credits.

As a result of these programs, more than half the revenue coming into the state from the film industry over the past 16 years has come between 2004 and 2007, according to Sharon Pinkenson, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office.

Why create such great tax breaks for the film industry? Simple: It’s an industry that only spends where it is, it never takes, says Pinkenson. When a film production comes into an area, it hires local workers, rents local trucks and equipment, pays local and state taxes, stays in local hotels, eats at local restaurants and drinks at local bars. When a film is wrapped, it takes nothing away from the area, and leaves millions of dollars in the local economy in its wake.

“All of the people that come here [for a film shoot] pay taxes,” says Pinkenson. “It’s really a bonanza for the state.”

According to a recent report by the Greater Philadelphia Film Office, the total economic activity the film industry brought to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from 2004 to 2007 was $796 million. The state received $22.5 million in state and local taxes during this time.

With major studios and sound stages being constructed in both Delaware and Montgomery counties this fall, Pinkenson says the film, television and video production in the state will only increase.

“This means that all of the shows that are calling me now will have a place to go.”

But it’s not just tax incentives that have been bringing filmmakers to the state. Pennsylvania is flush with every type of location and weather a filmmaker could need, and Pinkenson is the first to point this out to prospective projects.

“We have a huge advantage,” says Pinkenson. “The whole state offers so much.”

Not only is Pennsylvania in the middle of the Northeast corridor, benefiting from all four seasons and yet no extreme weather, it has locations that include a big modern city with skyscrapers, ghettos, colonial neighborhoods, historic sites, countryside, rolling hills, farms and quaint towns.

From 2004 to 2007 alone, almost 14,000 jobs were created by the film industry in the state; 14 feature films were shot in southeastern Pennsylvania last year alone.

“The increase in movie jobs began when Governor Rendell pushed the launch of the Film Office, Sharon Pinkenson sold Philly as a great place to shoot and M. Night’s loyalty to the area was noticed by other filmmakers,” says Ken Finn, a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 52, who has been doing production work on films in Pennsylvania for the past 10 years.

“The influx of films has formed and trained great crew [workers] in the area, which makes us even more attractive to the industry,” says Finn. “I’m never in want for work.”