County Commission funds a sequel to a regional film office
by David Madison
The cameras were rolling. All was quiet on the press conference set. Then bam! A small explosion cues Mayor Victor Ashe, who emerges from a make-believe bank vault to announce the Greater Knoxville Film and Tape Commission's arrival on the local scene.
That was August of 1993. Ashe and a small cadre of film professionals staged the theatrical press conference in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency. The bank vault was intended to symbolize the riches to be had if Knoxville could attract more film and video business.
Unfortunately, the pyrotechnical press conference would be the only production credited to the short-lived Knoxville Commission. But now, under the auspices of the Knoxville Area Chamber Partnership, another local film office is in the works. The Knox County Commission recently approved a $25,000 start-up budget for the film office, which will work with the Nashville-based Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission to aggressively lure more productions to East Tennessee.
When producer Chuck Gordon set out to make October Sky with actress Laura Dern, he scouted in West Virginia and Virginia before deciding to shoot around Knoxville in 1998. Alex Alexander, supervising producer at local production facility Cinetel, says Gordon was impressed by the geography, the hospitality, and the local pool of film professionals.
In turn, Knoxville businesses were impressed by how much money October Sky brought into the local economy—a total of $6 million by the Chamber Partnership's count.
Now, says Alexander, Gordon "is supposedly looking for another property that could work well in East Tennessee." Alexander believes the new, county-supported film commission will bring in even more business. Unlike the old, Greater Knoxville Commission, the new East Tennessee Film Commission could eventually have the money and staff the former commission lacked.
"We sort of lost steam as individual citizens," says Alexander, explaining how the all-volunteer commission folded about two years after Mayor Ashe emerged from the exploding bank vault. It published a production guide for visiting producers, but accomplished little else. "The problem was there was very little funding. And we were all working stiffs."
Chamber Partnership President Tom Ingram, who helped start the state's film commission while working for Gov. Lamar Alexander, says he'll ask the county commission at its meeting in April to approve an annual budget for the new office that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $150,000. With funding in hand, the East Tennessee Film Commission will create promotional materials and hire at least two staffers.
"The real model for this is Memphis," says Ingram, describing that city's success as the setting for several Hollywood features, including The Client and The People Vs. Larry Flynt.
It's important for West, Middle, and East Tennessee to have their own film offices because, as Stephanie Conner, executive director of the Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission, explains, "You've got to be really quick with your turnaround" when trying to attract big budget features.
"East Tennessee is tricky because we don't have anybody on the ground," says Conner. "We don't have a formal mechanism in place."
For most film offices, that mechanism begins with trips to location expos in Los Angeles and New York City. At the end of the month, a representative from Knoxville will pitch East Tennessee at the upcoming expo in Los Angeles. The Knoxville rep will share a booth with other reps from Nashville and Memphis. Each will trumpet their slice of the state to interested producers.
Once a producer decides to shoot in East Tennessee, says Conner, he or she goes in search of local professionals who can build sets, hold microphones, and scout locations. When the East Tennessee Film Commission is up and running, she says, producers will have "one person to go to" when certain needs arise. For example, the film office can help secure street closures for a car chase or an abandoned building for a shootout.
"Community support is one of the things that will make this area a success," Mona May, former chair of the Florida Film Commission. "When I say community support, that means cooperation from the sheriff's department, the fire department, the police department. It needs to be streamlined. And if that happens, it's going to take off."
In 1987, May watched as the area around Lakeland, Fla., blossomed into a production hotbed. It all began with a feature produced by HBO called Long Gone.
"We started the film office in response [to Long Gone]," says May, who works for a local law firm when she's not volunteering in the effort to create the East Tennessee Film Commission. "It's similar to October Sky here. It just started rolling."
Long Gone was followed by such features such as My Girl, Edward Scissorhands, and China Moon. And as the number of feature projects began to increase, so did the number of commercials.
"The same thing can happen here," says May, who calls television commercials the "bread and butter" of any local film economy. MC Hammer once shot a Pepsi commercial in Stokely Athletic Center and the Budweiser of Japan, Asahi Beer, came all the way to East Tennessee to shoot one of its TV spots.
Knoxville's growing number of television, film and media companies—HGTV, Atmosphere Pictures, Jupiter Entertainment, IPIX—make the area attractive to producers because each adds to the local pool of technical and artistic talent, says May.
"It's cheaper to hire locally," she says, describing how a third of all production budgets general go directly into the local economy. With a network-produced movie of the week, that could mean as much as $1 million.
"The talent is here. The locations are here," says May. "It's just so untapped."
February 17, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 7
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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