Although I've never had any desire to live in Los Angeles (there will be Texas bluebonnets in heaven, you know), I must admit that a little taste of Hollywood creates a merciless hunger for more. What must it be like to bump into filmmakers at grocery stores, pharmacies, and coffee shops like ordinary people?
Texas is aggressively working to bring the film industry in the Lone Star State and in the DFW metroplex to its full potential and AFI Dallas International is helping make giant leaps toward doing that. We also have very active film commissions statewide and locally including Dallas, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. There's even a film commission in Amarillo and El Paso. El Paso! Do you know what is in El Paso? NOTHING. Well, nothing but room to shoot twenty eight films in the area including portions of The Day After Tomorrow and Man on Fire. And you thought El Paso was just for Mexican border and desert films, didn't you?
While AFI Dallas may not fill all 60,000 seats in its 190 films and events, as Chris Vognar of the Dallas Morning News said, "we're the new kid on the festival block" and Texas is serious about bringing the film industry to where the deer and the antelope have big hair and drive Chevrolet pickup trucks.
AFI Dallas
Film Screening Guide
Free Classics Showing at Victory Plaza
Texas Film Commission
6 comments:
I think as soon as Texas can get on board with some kind of film investment program like New Mexico, you're gonna see an EXPLOSION of filmmaking growth because you can shooting ANY kind of movie in Texas.
I used to live in Orange, Texas when I was a kid and you could have easily made that town look like a Louisiana swamp town back then.
You guys got it all... That's obvious. But until they bring the tax incentives, rebates, and hopefully, an investment program into the mix, I think it's going to play third fiddle to the likes of New Mexico and Louisiana.
That sucks because I wouldn't mind moving there.
Unk
Geez... Starting to sound like Olaf... LOL. Not that that's necessarily bad...
Unk
the OK Film Commission was on a big campaign the past few years to try and steal some of that Texas film opportunity, especially after Katrina blew out LA's... but North Carolina came in and stole most of what was left
Incentives have been an explosive issue around here especially with last year's hullaballoos (sp?) about Friday Nights lights wanting to go some place else to film and even the film version of Dallas - BLASPHEMY!!!!!
The good news is that while many Texans have been serious all along about looking at these issues, those Chambers, Visitors' Bureaus, EDC's, local governments and legislators who were voices of doubt are finally seeing the economic reality of the film industry and are beginning to give film development the same consideration as any other corporation that brings jobs and revenue into a community.
The problem comes when those incentives are tied to a graduating job number scale over a five year period or some such thing. There's a method to the madness but it's a madness doesn't work for the film industry because it's designed for factories,etc.
But times, they're a changing!!!
Yes, North Carolina was the source of the Friday Night Lights fights.
I am currently living in Wilmington, NC. There is quite a campaign to bring more movie making here. Everyone wants part of the action, I guess.
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