A government agency, trying to make Ohio's economy more like Hollywood's, is using tax credits to entice filmmakers to shoot movies in-state.
The Ohio Film Office through the Ohio Department of Development is offering $10 million in motion picture tax credits to filmmakers from July 2009 to June 2010 in hopes of bringing jobs and tourism to the state, said Katie Sabatino, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Development. Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland signed the tax credit bill into law in July 2009.
Next year's tax credit will double to $20 million, said Jeremy Henthorn, the Ohio Film Office's director.
The first movie to use the credit was Unstoppable, a major production to be released later this year starring Denzel Washington, Henthorn said.
About 20 percent of the movie was filmed in Martins Ferry, Ohio, a city across the border from Wheeling, W. Va., he said.
Unstoppable, which is about a runaway train carrying toxic chemicals, used the winding train tracks of Martins Ferry in some of its scenes.
The city itself was packed with people
Henthorn said, adding that the film made the town a tourist attraction and some Ohioans worked on the set.
Henthorn said he estimates that larger productions hire about 400 to 500 people a day.
The movie received a tax credit of $3.8 million, but spent about $5.1 million in Ohio, giving the state more than $1 million in revenue, he added.
Even before the tax credit, several well-known movies filmed partly in Ohio including Spider-Man 3 and The Soloist in Cleveland and Elizabethtown in Cincinnati, Henthorn said.
Still, Ruth Bradley, the director of the Athens International Film Festival, said she doubts large productions will bring many jobs to Ohio.
Really big productions are not going to hire people they don't know; they bring in their own crew said Bradley, who also runs the uptown movie theater, the Athena Cinema, for Ohio University.
She added that she doesn't know how many skilled film workers, such as art designers, are available for hire in the state.
Henthorn, who comes from an independent filmmaking background, said independent movie makers hire more Ohioans, so he is focusing on films budgeted from $300,000 to $10 million.
However, some smaller filmmakers said they don't think the credit will help them.
(The tax credit) seems like it's geared more toward larger productions like much bigger budgeted things
said Edward Douglas, the director of the 2010 independently-financed horror film, The Dead Matter, which was filmed in and near Cleveland and Mansfield.
Douglas, who also founded the Midnight Syndicate, an Ohio-based company that produces Halloween music and has branched out to produce movies, said he is hopeful the Ohio Film Office will bring all types of films to the state.
I hope they'll expand it to cover more than just a few huge projects
he said. I've seen a lot of movies that were considering Cleveland and Ohio move to Michigan and Detroit.
An Ohio University assistant professor of digital postproduction, Tom Hayes, said he was glad to see the film office open after a similar entity closed to save money during former Gov. Bob Taft's administration.
It was a real blow to the production community
Hayes said of the closure. He added that he thinks the office, which reopened two years ago, will bring in more revenue to the state.
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Gail Burkhardt
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