BRATTLEBORO — In the climax of D. W. Griffith's 1920 silent melodrama Way Down East, the film's heroine is trapped on an ice floe rushing toward a waterfall. The frozen river that served as the stage for her peril, and subsequent dramatic rescue, was constructed in the editing room from footage of the White and Connecticut rivers.
The climactic scene was filmed at the meeting of these two rivers near White River Junction, making Way Down East Vermont's first feature film appearance.
Since Griffith's day, an estimated 150 movies have been produced in Vermont, including shorts, documentaries, animation, local independents, and a handful of Hollywood features. Nearly two-thirds of these films, listed on the website of the Office of the Creative Economy (OCE), were made following 1996 - the year that Vermont began a formal effort to encourage in-state movie-making by creating the Vermont Film Commission (VFC).
As a state-owned nonprofit funded through the Agency of Travel and Tourism, the Film Commission was charged with bringing film productions and associated production jobs to Vermont.
The organization was beleaguered, and it dissolved in 2011. Now its mission is inherited by the recently formed Office of the Creative Economy. With it, the OCE has also inherited the heated debate in Vermont's film community over whether the mission is being met, how it should be accomplished, and whether the effort is worthwhile.
Lots of competition
Forty-two states have film commissions charged with bringing movie production dollars into their state economies, which they often do by offering financial incentives for producers.
Like Vermont's film commission, many similar state offices came into existence in the mid-1990s, when the phrase “runaway production” entered the vocabulary of show business.
Runaway production refers to films conceived in one state but produced in another for financial reasons. For some states with a developed film industry, the increasing amount of runaway production was a problem.
For others looking to enter the arena of film business, it was an opportunity.
The benefits that film production can offer a state economy make film an attractive field for investment. Tangible benefits can range from tax revenues; employment for local actors, set-builders, and technicians; and incidental spending at businesses surrounding a film shoot.
Less-tangible benefits can include promotion and increased tourism potential for the state, all with relatively little environmental impact.
Neighboring Massachusetts is among states offering a particularly attractive incentive for film producers, and supporters say the Bay State has reaped proportionate economic rewards.
If a film spends more than $50,000 in Massachusetts, the state offers the producers a credit on their state tax liability equal to 25 percent of the production costs - in effect, giving filmmakers 25 cents back from every dollar spent.
In 2009, this credit resulted in $330 million spent in the Bay State by film companies - and $42 million given in wages to Massachusetts film workers.
In 2011, 16 films made in Massachusetts were nominated for Academy Awards, and Moviemaker magazine ranked Boston as the best city in America in which to shoot a film.
But the major tool of the Massachusetts Film Commission's success - the tax credit - is one that the Vermont Legislature consistently refused to grant the VFC.
The VFC tried to make up for this handicap with other benefits, such as waivers for location fees and subsidized lodging for film crews in local hotels.
Another effort was its website - www.vermontfilm.com - on which it worked to highlight the resources Vermont could offer producers and steer them to Vermont's small but active community of resident film professionals.
It hosted a forum and a large directory of profiles submitted by local actors, editors, writers, technicians, equipment suppliers, and other useful film folks.
Despite its competitive disadvantage, the VFC scored a string of successes in the late 1990s when three major Hollywood productions came to Vermont within a few years.
In 1998, the drama “The Cider House Rules” stood Dummerston in for parts of Maine. The following year, comedian Jim Carrey came to northern Vermont to shoot the screwball comedy “Me, Myself & Irene,” and the ghost story “What Lies Beneath” tapped locations in the Burlington area.
Loranne Turgeon, director of the VFC at the time, says of these films, “They chose the locations that worked for them, and we provided a lot of service. It didn't hurt that I knew the producers of each film, but it was location, location, location - and they found what they needed in that realm.”
Filmmaking, she explains, was a different business then:
“A filmmaker once had the choice to shoot a film where it was depicted in the script, or where they would like. That just isn't the case anymore.”
With new pressures on the film industry from digital media and shrinking domestic audiences, Turgeon says “It's all bottom-line thinking these days.”
For the Vermont Film Commission, still without a significant tax incentive to tempt producers, bottom-line thinking would not prove helpful. “What Lies Beneath” remains the most recent major Hollywood film made in Vermont.
“Now, without an incentive,” Turgeon says, “the likelihood of a film shooting in a state without one is almost zero.”
Starting anew
In direct competition with such film-incentive heavyweights as Massachusetts and New York, the Vermont Film Commission not only failed to capture runaway productions from Hollywood, it also experienced runaway production of its own.
As the entertainment industry was squeezed tighter, tax incentive competition among the states grew fiercer. With incentives becoming ever more important, many established players in Vermont's own native media community began taking their projects over the border.
Director David Giancola, of Rutland-based Edgewood Studios, says that last production his company brought to Vermont was the 2008 Hallmark Christmas special “Moonlight and Mistletoe,” budgeted at $1.3 million, and shot at the Fullerton Inn in Chester.
Although the Fullerton Inn remains proud of its moment in the spotlight, featuring stills from the film on its website, Giancola says that all of Edgewood's current projects “are planned for production in states that have tax incentives,” such as New York, which offers a 35 percent tax credit.
Other Vermont-based filmmakers, such as Jay Craven, have also been lured out of state by incentives.
Throughout the 2000s, Vermont's filmmakers became increasingly dissatisfied with the opportunities and support they were failing to receive from the state film commission.
In 2011, a group of 10 Vermont filmmakers, including high-profile names such as filmmakers John O'Brien, Craven, and actor Rusty DeWees, sent a letter of concern to Gov. Peter Shumlin calling for a restructuring of the VFC.
One issue was funding. The federal stimulus money that supported the VFC was due to expire that year. Another was the stagnation and inadequacy of the commission's promotion and networking efforts.
Asked about the online community that the VFC attempted to create, O'Brien remarked to Seven Days that, “The only thing live on the website is the weather."
In that year's job bill, Shumlin responded by dissolving the VFC and giving its responsibilities to a newly created division of the Agency of Commerce and Economic Development: the Office of the Creative Economy.
Unlike its predecessor, the OCE is not exclusively engaged with film. According to its creating legislation, “the office shall provide business,networking, and technical support to establish, grow, and attract enterprises involved with the creative economy.”
The OCE's website (bit.ly/1kGH2Hf) explains that the office “has prioritized five focal areas for support”: film and new media, advertising and marketing, games and software development, the manufacturing arts, and arts and cultural organizations.
Maintaining the balance of these five areas is the responsibility of Lars Torres, who became director of the OCE in April 2013, replacing Joe Bookchin, the final director of the VFC.
A 1995 graduate of Brattleboro's School of International Training, Torres previously worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and USAID as a creator of prizes and competitions designed to spur innovation.
Most recently he owned and managed a co-working space, Local 64, in Montpelier.
Low expectations
Art Bell, owner of the Burlington-based production company Dreamlike Pictures, says of Torres, “We sought someone as a cheerleader and promoter who was very comfortable with the digital world. Lars was an excellent choice based on this criteria.”
Bell was among the filmmakers who called for rearranging the VFC in 2011. He says that the changes that have taken place since then haven't had a positive impact on his business. Dreamlike Pictures “routinely received maybe five to 10 referrals a year” from the VFC, but it has “never found one job, referral or contact through the Office [of Creative Economy],” he says.
Although he supports Torres, Bell admits he doesn't have high expectations of the OCE:
“As soon as that [the consistent referrals] went away, we stopped having much in the way of expectations from the state to help grow our industry.”
Nonetheless, Dreamlike Pictures stays busy, and Bell says that about a third of his work is for in-state clients. His company receives a large number of projects from out of state as well.
“At the moment, we have a film project from New Zealand, three music videos - from Nashville, L.A., and Austin - and a short from Maine. Entities tend to reach out to us directly based on our specialties or our past work. It is not fair in my opinion to measure the effectiveness of the OCE on any more or less productions coming to Vermont.”
Indeed, the OCE doesn't see attracting out-of-state production as central to its mission and has no plans to advocate for film tax incentives.
“We want to be responsive if the opportunity arises,” says Torres of outside productions coming to Vermont, “but it isn't our priority.”
Of financial incentives, he says that “it's a challenge to think of how they can be viable. There's a lot of skepticism.”
Instead of filling the role of a traditional film commission, the OCE wants to create a new niche for Vermont film in the competitive environment dominated by its neighboring states. And the OCE's idea of how to create this niche centers not on outside productions, but rather on creating opportunities in Vermont for Vermont film professionals.
This philosophy isn't new. Rather, it's another part of the OCE's inheritance from the film commission. In an interview with Seven Days in March 2011, the VFC's final director, Joe Bookchin, said that stimulating Vermont's film community was “not about [attracting] a Hollywood film; it's about growing an indigenous economy.”
During his leadership, Bookchin focused most of the film commission's energy in this direction. In its final incarnation, the VFC's focus was less concerned with runaway productions from other states than with assisting the filmmakers and media professionals already working and living in Vermont.
Although many in Vermont's film community reportedly agree with this new priority, there remain questions about how to put it into practice.
Bell says he believes that “a strong film commission website - as almost every other state has - is the most practical, real world assistance the state could do. Without a vibrant, active website the OCE is of little value to us."
The website, vermontfilm.com, is also part of the OCE's inheritance from the film commission. Torres says that the website, along with its forums and extensive list of Vermont media businesses, is “winding down” and will be replaced within a year by a PDF directory of Vermont's film resources. This directory is meant as an easy aid to interested producers, not as a way for local filmmakers to connect.
“In the era of Facebook and Google Plus, why does the state need to provide networking?” he says.
Self-organization is what Vermont's film community needs to thrive, he says, and he offers a comparison with Vermont's nascent video game industry, which has given itself a voice through the Vermont Game Developers Association. Without a comparable unified voice for the film sector, Torres says, its priorities are hard for the OCE to discern.
As the OCE enters its third year of activity, opinion among Vermont filmmakers remains mixed.
Giancola of Edgewood Studios says, “I will help Lars any way I can, but with a de-funded film commission, vague new titles, and a complete lack of understanding from Montpelier as to the statewide financial benefits of film production, Edgewood has moved on."
Bell, in Burlington, is at work on five projects with Dreamlike Pictures. Being so busy, Bell says, “I admit, I hadn't even thought of the OCE in months."