By Robert Goldrich
For Mark Hankey, executive producer of Boston-based Picture Park (an AICP-member company), one of the most important elements of Massachusetts’ recently passed production incentives package is that it applies not only to features and television programs, but also to commercials.
Hankey is a member of the Massachusetts Production Coalition (MPC), which played a key role in helping to bring about this anti-runaway production measure. The MPC is an alliance of production professionals and related groups in the state that are actively engaged in content creation for all media. The mission of the volunteer-driven coalition is to help maintain, promote, increase and expedite the development, creation and production of film, video and new media content in the city of Boston and throughout the state of Massachusetts.
MPC representatives lobbied vigorously for the production incentives, garnering bipartisan support for the initiative in both houses of the state legislature.
Hankey was brought into the MPC fold earlier this year by Chris O’Donnell, IATSE Local 481 business manager and MPC legislative committee chairman. In a relatively brief span, the MPC has made significant gains.
As reported last week (SHOOT, 12/9, p. 1), the principal elements of the incentives package include: a 20 percent wage tax credit on a filming project’s source payroll in Massachusetts; a 25 percent tax credit for qualifying Massachusetts production expenses (excluding payroll); and a sales tax exemption on Massachusetts production costs.
To qualify for the 20 percent tax credit and the sales tax exemption, a producer has to incur at least $250,000 in Massachusetts-based production costs in a year. To be eligible for the aforementioned 25 percent tax credit, more than half of the total production must take place in Massachusetts or more than half of the total production costs need to be spent in the state.
The total credits available for any single production are capped at $7 million. And there’s no appropriations cap on the bill, meaning that funding for the anti-runaway provisions will cover the entire year.
The new measure is scheduled to take effect in late February, 90 days after it was signed into law by Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.). However, the provisions will be retroactive to January 1, 2006.
AICP executive VP Steve Caplan described the legislation as “ambitious and far reaching….We’re encouraged and pleased to see these incentives enacted–and that they apply to commercials.”
Next on the MPC agenda is to bring about the formation of a state sanctioned film commission under the Massachusetts Executive Office of Economic Development. A full-fledged state film office is needed to help facilitate and administer the new incentives.
O’Donnell related, “This new law is going to open the floodgates for production in Massachusetts, and we have to become very effective in channeling this new business into our community. The MPC’s sole agenda is to facilitate production in the commonwealth–and we look forward to working with the Office of Economic Development to make this the mission of the new film office as well.”
Tim Burton Discusses His Dread Of AI As An Exhibition of His Work Opens In London
The imagination of Tim Burton has produced ghosts and ghouls, Martians, monsters and misfits — all on display at an exhibition that is opening in London just in time for Halloween.
But you know what really scares him? Artificial intelligence.
Burton said Wednesday that seeing a website that had used AI to blend his drawings with Disney characters "really disturbed me."
"It wasn't an intellectual thought — it was just an internal, visceral feeling," Burton told reporters during a preview of "The World of Tim Burton" exhibition at London's Design Museum. "I looked at those things and I thought, 'Some of these are pretty good.' … (But) it gave me a weird sort of scary feeling inside."
Burton said he thinks AI is unstoppable, because "once you can do it, people will do it." But he scoffed when asked if he'd use the technology in this work.
"To take over the world?" he laughed.
The exhibition reveals Burton to be an analogue artist, who started off as a child in the 1960s experimenting with paints and colored pencils in his suburban Californian home.
"I wasn't, early on, a very verbal person," Burton said. "Drawing was a way of expressing myself."
Decades later, after films including "Edward Scissorhands," "Batman," "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Beetlejuice," his ideas still begin with drawing. The exhibition includes 600 items from movie studio collections and Burton's personal archive, and traces those ideas as they advance from sketches through collaboration with set, production and costume designers on the way to the big screen.
London is the exhibition's final stop on a decade-long tour of 14 cities in 11 countries. It has been reconfigured and expanded with 90 new objects for its run in... Read More