Scott Phillips knows the one thing Columbus needs to break into the film business
It’s a New Year, and we all know what that means – resolutions. We all pledge to smoke less, drink less, eat better, go to the gym more. It’s a time for bringing priorities into focus. But, we tend to make one mistake when it comes to New Year’s resolutions: we limit them to ourselves, to our personal growth. We should be making resolutions for our city. Consider it a community To-Do list for 2018.
My New Year’s resolution for Columbus is simple: hire a full-time film commissioner to bring the motion picture industry to our city in a more substantial way. According to Governor Nathan Deal, there were 320 film and television productions in Georgia in 2017 that resulted in $ 2.7 billion in direct spending in our state. The only way an appreciable portion of that revenue is going to find its way to our city is if we hire a qualified individual whose sole responsibility is pursuing those dollars on our behalf.
What does a film commissioner do? A local film commissioner markets our city to the thriving film industry that is spilling out of Atlanta and slowly, but surely, finding its way to other Georgia communities. I, Tonya, the new award-winning drama starring Margot Robbie as infamous figure skater Tonya Harding, filmed many of its ice skating sequences in Macon. The Haunting of Hill House, a new Netflix horror series starring Timothy Hutton, recently shot a number of scenes in LaGrange. A full-time film commissioner would be tasked with bringing these types of productions (and all the local jobs and revenue they generate) to Columbus on a regular basis.
Can’t we find a volunteer to serve as our local film commissioner? Like Liam Neeson in the Taken films, a film commissioner needs to have a special set of skills. It’s not enough to simply like movies. It’s not enough to have beginner-level knowledge of film production. Film industry professionals can smell an amateur from a mile away. An inexperienced local film commissioner means wasted time for a film production, and that means added expense that the filmmakers can avoid by simply going elsewhere.
It’s all about economics. There’s no time for a film commissioner to learn everything on the job. From Day One, a film commissioner needs to understand the financing of film productions, the logistics of shooting on location and the equipment required by a given project along with having a familiarity with local acting talent and available crew members. It is highly unlikely that someone from our community will have this extensive skill set AND be willing to put it to use free of charge.
Isn’t this the responsibility of the Columbus Convention and Visitors Bureau? Simply put: NO. They have been given the responsibility to serve as our local film commission, but they have neither the time nor the expertise to do so effectively. That is in no way a “knock” on Peter Bowden and his staff. Their primary mandate is to fill the hotels and restaurants in Columbus with business people attending corporate functions and tourists flocking to local events. That is their full-time job, and they labor under the same personnel and budget constraints as the other branches of our city government. Consequently, marketing our city to the film industry will, at best, be a part-time endeavor if it remains the CCVB’s responsibility.
How much is this going to cost and how will we pay for it? In business, spending money with the hope of making money is the name of the game. In local government, it’s not very popular. To hire a qualified candidate, cover office overhead and pay for travel to film festivals and networking/marketing opportunities around the country would run around $ 125,000.00 per year. Looking to the government to fund this position may be a pipedream. However, there are businesses located in Columbus that are committed to the growth of our community. Grant money is available for a variety of artistic causes. We should be able to privately raise the funds needed to create this position with the hope that it would become self-sustaining as the economic impact of the film industry begins to be felt here.
How can you get involved? During the recent On the Table initiative that sponsored small-group discussions throughout our community, about twenty people met to discuss the state of the film industry in Columbus. At our follow-up meeting in December, that group had nearly doubled in size. If you would like your voice to be heard or you have expertise you would like to lend to the cause, contact me at waydownfilmsociety@gmail.com, and I will add you to the email list for our upcoming meetings.
I appreciate my new editor giving me a soapbox to preach from for my very first column for this magazine. I typically review films and interview the people who make them, but this topic is too important to ignore any longer. When it comes to hiring a full-time film commissioner, we can’t afford to lose any more momentum. If we do, we’ll spend the next decade thinking about what might have been.
____________________________________________________________________________
Scott Phillips is a member of the Georgia Film Critics Association (GAFCA) and serves as the Content Programmer for the Way Down Film Festival held at the Springer Opera House each fall.