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Knoxville shoots to become a destination for filmmakers

by Paige M. Travis

Seeing your city on film is a singularly thrilling experience. Any Knoxville resident who’s seen Box of Moonlight or October Sky can attest to the sweet gratification of glimpsing a familiar landmark in a major motion picture; even seeing someone’s house you recognize on an episode of Trading Spaces can be exciting. Citizens of Los Angeles, New York or Toronto may be inured to seeing everyday sights reflected on the big screen or boob tube, but East Tennesseans are too infrequently treated to a taste of hometown scenery. But that frequency could be changing with a growing production industry and a vigorous new film commissioner.

Knoxville’s production community exists in a kind of middle ground. We’re not an obvious choice for filmmakers more familiar to the usual suspects like New York, Los Angeles, Toronto or Vancouver, where film crews operate around the clock shooting commercials, TV shows or feature films. We might never operate at those levels, but Knoxville and the outer reaches of East Tennessee do have something to offer filmmakers who seek a community that’s ready to support and assist an out-of-town crew.

“There is a wonderful pool of talented folks who have what it takes to work in film in Knoxville. They just need an outlet by which to polish and hone those skills and talents,” says Jeff Delaney, who has been an actor, writer, director and producer. Currently he’s producing a short film called Have You Checked Your Weight Today? written by Kent Edwards being shot now at various locales. Delaney is one of approximately 2,000 people employed—either on a full-time, part-time or free-lance basis—by Knoxville’s film or television-production industry. The Scripps-owned cable network HGTV, located in Cedar Bluff, is perhaps the most visible employer of grips, gaffers, scenery builders, props handlers and the like—people trained in the technical aspects of capturing action on tape. The rest are part-time contract or free-lance workers, hired as the seasons of available work undulate with the economy and the demands of the industry’s needs. All of these people—including actors—are served by Delaney’s infant organization called TiPTOE (Tennessee Independent Production & Talent Organization East), an association of like-minded folks interested in working on homegrown or out-of-town projects or learning more about the skills involved.

The group, which Delaney founded with John Stewart and Jeff Reed (who each have their own production companies—Stewart Productions, Inc., and Reed Media), came about after the three worked on several projects together. They brainstormed about “some kind of group that could bring production and talent people together and form a network that would allow an outlet for the community and an opportunity for anyone interested in filmmaking to be able to get to know one another better,” Delaney says. This group would then hold workshops and information sessions designed to connect some dots between what Delaney perceives as the local community’s strengths and weaknesses. Although he is mostly encouraged by the skills offered here, “many members of the Knoxville production community lack the experience that the ‘big studios’ need when they do come to the area to film,” he says. In its future endeavors, TiPTOE intends to help prepare production crews for what film crews will expect.

Both Pellissippi State Technical Community College and the University of Tennessee have programs in video production. Students leave these programs trained to be editors, camera operators, gaffers and grips—skills known as below-the-line skills. What Knoxville lacks is a comparable pool of above-the-line professionals, such as directors, cinematographers, producers and screenwriters. Delaney’s organization is committed to changing that, as is Knoxville’s new film commissioner Michael Barnes.

Barnes is still fairly new to town, but he’s already a pro in the production community. For 24 years he worked from every angle of the industry. After graduating from Southern Illinois University in 1981, he wore the hats of reporter, cameraman, writer and satellite engineer. In 1987 he spent a year reporting from the presidential campaign of Bob Dole for a television station in Wichita, Kan. Soon after he was lured into the industry of aviation filming, where he lived a life of adventure—traveling around the world about six times in 11 years. But the time away from his family, combined with a colleague’s death and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, convinced Barnes it was time to settle down. His family moved to Denver and then to Knoxville, where he worked for an independent production firm before being hired as the new head of the East Tennessee Television & Film Commission.

The ETFC was established in 2000 by Knox County to assist production crews seeking filming sites in the area. By that time, the aforementioned Box of Moonlight and October Sky had already used East Tennessee as a source of scenery and skilled extras and crew members, and County Commissioners wanted to further attract productions.

“Any time you bring in people that are involved with any aspect of filming, they spend money,” says County Commissioner Larry Stephens, who helped establish the film commission with Tom Ingram, who was CEO of the Chamber at the time. “They use local talent and production companies. There is a huge industry here in Knox County. It was growing on its own and we weren’t doing anything. The film commission’s job was to help it grow.”

Stephens served as head of the film commission’s board for its first few years, then stepped down to be head coach of Powell High School’s football team.

The commission’s original director, Mona May, resigned in May 2003 after the ETFC lost funding from the City of Knoxville and six surrounding counties. Stephens says those counties withdrew funding because of budget crunches. They didn’t see their contribution translating into a direct economic impact.

“It’s kind of like the tourism impact,” Stephens says. “You know it’s happening, but it’s sometimes difficult to measure. In better economic times maybe they’ll get back on board.”

The commission, now funded solely by Knox County, has recently been threatened by more cuts if County Mayor Mike Ragsdale’s proposed $30 wheel tax is voted down in a referendum. Although the county’s budget will likely be upheld by the wheel tax or a property tax hike, Barnes already cut $10,000 from his budget.

Before it hired Barnes, the film commission’s board was considering a change of direction, resulting in the addition of “television” to the organization’s name.

“You can’t just focus on film,” says Barnes. “You can spend an enormous amount of money just marketing to the film community. And yet we have this huge television production community that wasn’t being ignored, but it wasn’t the first thought on the plate.”

He feels strongly about boosting the local industry’s numbers and skill levels through higher education, in some part by starting an internship program. His first intern, Lauren Justice, a senior in electronic media (formerly the broadcasting major) at UT, was recently offered a post-graduation internship at Rivr Media. Justice, a theater minor, is interested in directing or producing; she’s had four years of hands-on experience with the university’s student-run cable station TVC (The Volunteer Channel).

Justice helped the film commission accomplish its main goal: answer out-of-town filmmakers’ inquiries about potential shooting locations in East Tennessee. Crews could be looking for anything as general as an open field or as specific as an old barn with a functioning woodworking shop inside. If they want it, we’ve pretty much got it, says Barnes.

“You have your mountains and your woods, and you do have some good urban scenes you could set here. So the only thing we’re limited on is the ocean,” he says.

Barnes considers Justice a homegrown asset of Knoxville’s production community—someone who could graduate here, work here and continue to gain experience beneficial to the industry at large without having to go to New York or L.A.

Boosting our talent pool and visibility on a greater scale will result in a kind of trickle-up effect, suggests Delaney, who refers to a recent big-budget film that shot in East Tennessee but auditioned for talent in Atlanta.

“That is a problem,” Delaney says. “Knoxville is bursting with creative filmmakers and actors. The unfortunate part is that in the recent past there has been no outlet for this creativity, which in turn reflects to the bigger industry that there must be no talented actors or filmmakers here either. TiPTOE hopes to change that.”

And where Barnes is making moves to strengthening the ETTFC’s ties with higher education, Delaney would take the idea further: into starting a film school in Knoxville. Currently, the closest film school is Watkins Film School (part of Watkins College of Art and Design) in Nashville.

“I personally would love to see a school founded that would provide the opportunity to those who are serious about filmmaking and acting for film right here in Knoxville,” Delaney says. “And not require moving to Los Angeles or New York to receive the types of opportunities and training they are looking for. The need is here, the students are here; if we build it... they will stay.”

Barnes compliments Mona May for keeping Knoxville on Hollywood’s radar.

“Mona May did a very good job of getting the word into Hollywood, getting the word to the decision-makers—the producers and directors—and letting them know that we are here,” he says. That networking task continues in the form of Barnes’ recent trip to Memphis to attend the opening of the Rock & Soul Museum, an event teeming with musical and on-screen talent. Barnes said he and board chair Helen Short couldn’t pass up this rare opportunity to hobnob with the likes of Dan Akroyd, who was rumored to attend the opening. Shaking hands and getting Knoxville’s reputation out into the production community at large is the ETTFC’s biggest job.

“Tennessee should be a part of California,” Delaney states.

Barring any geographic difficulties that goal might present, Delaney’s point is understood. To stay in the loop, East Tennessee needs to be a viable option for filmmakers whether they are shooting a feature-length movie, a commercial, a television show or an indie short. One way the film commission attracts productions is through financial incentives. Out-of-state production companies that spend more than $500,000 while filming in Tennessee qualify for a sales tax refund. And hotel rooms rented past 30 days are eligible for a refund of the hotel tax.

Kim McCray, a casting director based in Nashville, recently hired about 500 local extras for Pillar of Light: The Work and the Glory, a Vineyard Productions film that recently shot at several locations in East Tennessee including Blount Mansion. Based on Gerald Lund’s novels about a Mormon family in upstate New York in the early 1800’s, the film needed extras without modern enhancements.

“I was looking for several specific types,” says McCray, “in particular mountain men and women with longer hair. Casting a film set in the 1800s is never easy, you have to exclude so many people because of braces, hair highlights, etc. But so many wonderful people showed up.”

The extras were paid about minimum wage for their time, and the cast and crew, many of whom came from Vineyard’s home base of Utah, stayed in hotels in Vonore and Johnson City.

Tax incentives may speak to larger-budget projects, but most of the productions taking place in East Tennessee are shoots lasting only a few days, or low-budget efforts.

Jessica Levin, producer of Paul Harrill’s Gina, An Actress, Age 29 (which was shot in a week in the summer of 2000, and went on to win the prize for Best Short at the Sundance Film Festival), commends Knoxville for being supportive of short films as well as those with larger budgets and big-name stars.

She adds that because Knoxville is still off the beaten path, it’s not “overexposed”; it looks fresh on screen, something filmmakers seek in a location. And locals are still enthusiastic.

“In cities where film shoots are a regular phenomenon, like NY or Toronto, you experience a lot of burnout from local residents for whom the excitement of seeing a film shot in their neighborhood has long since worn off,” Levin says. “In less overexposed locations like Knoxville, I’ve found that local residents tend to be much more curious about the process and eager to help out.”

Gina received strong local support because it was a homegrown project—written and directed by Harrill, and starring local actors Amy Hubbard, David Dwyer, Bonnie Gould and David Brian Alley—all of whom, including Frankie Faison (a popular African-American character actor most recently in The Cookout and White Chicks), worked for free. The community matched the volunteer spirit: the City of Knoxville donated tents; restaurants donated a week’s worth of food to feed the cast and crew; and a bed & breakfast donated a room for Faison’s stay. Volunteers served as extras, production assistants, runners and other free hands.

Levin emphasizes the importance of film commissions and communities marking the difference between major productions with sizeable budgets and independents. “Independents are generally working under much more constrained budgets where every dollar counts,” she says. Because Gina was an in-town production, it wouldn’t have qualified for the commission’s sales-tax rebate; but films of its size operate far under that $500,000 mark.

Levin says cities like New York and Toronto offer sliding scales for equipment rentals and location fees to match a film’s budget.

“Often, it’s little things that go a long way,” she says. “A helpful police department, city services, local businesses that can offer discounts on accommodations and food. Everyone benefits by this cooperation. Producers and companies will return to cities where they’ve had good filming experiences.”

With so much talk of the creative class and a city’s ability to draw and support creative industries like film and television production, supporting the industry is important to several parties. From an economic standpoint, local government wants some of those Hollywood bucks as well as a healthy, sustainable local industry that produces taxpayers and valuable members of society. And in order to continue appearing on the filmmaking radar, Knoxville’s enthusiasm and support of film should stay juiced. Hand-in-hand with filmmaking opportunities goes the outlet for screening them.

Keith McDaniel threw the first Secret City Film Festival in June, screening 41 films in three days in Oak Ridge, half were from local sources and the rest were from Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Colorado and other far-flung locations. The festival follows in the footsteps of the Valleyfest film festival, which has been on hiatus since 2003, and joins a handful of other events—both ongoing and occasional—that put local films on big screens.

“If my festivals had a written mission statement, it would be to offer unique entertainment to the community through films and to broaden knowledge and facilitate encouragement and support for independent filmmakers in our region,” says McDaniel, who is already planning the 15 Minutes of Fame Film Festival & Workshop in January. McDaniel, a documentary filmmaker and a senior producer at HP Video, wants to get filmmakers out of their vacuums and into the world of like-minded creative types.

“The more encouragement these filmmakers get and the more people they meet who are involved in filmmaking, the more excited they become about doing quality work,” McDaniel says. “I’ve seen it time and time again: filmmakers attend a film festival and that energizes them to start new projects and become better at what they do.”

Film and video creations get regular spin at the Knoxville Museum of Art through a now-monthly open screening night. Dr. Norman Magden, Professor of Media Arts at UT, hosts the event, which draws mostly students creating work in that department. But the night is open to anyone making film, video or other time-arts (as long as they’re in the DVD or VHS format).

“We do try to encourage a more artistic/inventive approach in our screenings because it’s much easier for the commercial people to show their works in professional venues than those who are more independent and take more risks for expressive purposes,” says Magden, whose own experimental films frequently feature masked modern dancers. “We think that an art museum is the appropriate place to show time-arts.”

Film commissioner Barnes believes filmmakers will seek out Knoxville for the same reasons people settle here.

“Knoxville is attractive for a variety of reasons: it is quieter here, and we have access to recreational and educational facilities,” he says, adding his compliments to the cooperation he perceives between County Mayor Ragsdale and City Major Bill Haslam. “This city is finally getting its act together. I think people should be encouraged; if they’re not already, if they have not been keeping informed, I think they should be encouraged.”

September 23, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 39 © 2004 Metro Pulse