Government agencies under the U.S. Department of the Interior—like the National Park Service (NPS)—are in the process of gaining feedback to drafts of regulations reflecting their interpretation of how legislation for filming on federally owned lands should best be implemented. The development of regulations will prove pivotal in helping the spot production community to realize the film-friendly reforms contained in the original bill, which was signed into law last year by then-President Bill Clinton (SHOOT, 6/30/00, p. 1).
For the most part, the regulations drafted by the NPS have kept key progressive provisions of the law intact. For example, the regulations base "reasonable" filming fees for national parks on crew size and length of stay on location. Both of these barometers are favorable to commercials, which are usually smaller scale productions and have shorter lensing periods than their TV program and theatrical feature counterparts.
The regulations drafted by the NPS also uphold timely processing for film permits. The timetable for processing would be tied to the length of projected filming. For filming permits of shorter duration—as is typical in spots—the turnaround for processing would be shorter than would a request to shoot for an extended period of time, which is often the case for theatrical movies and telefilms.
Furthermore, the NPS regulations currently retain an 80-20 split of film fee revenue, with the 80 percent going to the local public land facility where lensing takes place. The balance of 20 percent is to be set aside for system-wide federal land needs. General consensus is that keeping the lion’s share of revenue within the local jurisdiction figures to benefit filming. Some segments of the industry reason that this revenue distribution policy could serve as additional incentive for local public land managers to facilitate production. This local revenue, for instance, could be put towards the hiring of liaisons to handle and expedite reasonable filming requests. Currently, many public land managers have assorted responsibilities, making it difficult for them to divert time to facilitating quick turnaround for the issuance of film permits. Options such as bringing in qualified retirees, and having a standby list of people available to service filming, may become economically feasible.
It was on the basis of these and other favorable provisions that the legislation gained industry backing as it made its way through Congress and then to the White House. As earlier reported, among those groups supporting the original bill’s provisions and passage into law were the Association of Independent Commercial Producers, the Association of National Advertisers and the Motion Picture Association of America.
Yet while they address prime provisions of the legislation, the drafted regulations also contain new wrinkles—some of which have raised industry eyebrows. For example, the NPS draft establishes separate fees/permits for shooting location, staging of a production, and parking. Additionally, the drafted regs require that for each person beyond a total of 60 gathered for a shoot, a daily charge of $25 would apply. That $25 per person and per day charge would be a logistical nightmare to enforce.
During the public comment period for the drafted regs, several people have offered feedback questioning the viability of these new proposals. Leigh von der Esch, director of the Utah Film Commission and a past president of the Association of Film Commissioners International, objected to the daily $25 per person fee. In a letter to the NPS, she claimed that such a proviso would be "a nightmare for anyone to administer, whether it is done by your monitors or the [production] company. Certainly we have seen companies move to two or more different locations in a day and if they are using a lot of extras, this stipulation would be totally unwieldy."
Von der Esch also wrote that the aforementioned separate fees for shooting on location, for staging and for parking are unnecessary and would just serve to generate more red tape. "One permit with fees-per-day would be better for NPS administratively, and for the [production] company," she contended.
In the big picture, von der Esch—who’s been lobbying during the past 16 years for streamlined, more uniform procedures, and for reasonable fees for filming on federal land—told SHOOT that "the U.S. is losing a lot of production. The runaway production problem has escalated. This clearly is not the time to make regulations more onerous."
She noted that the regs should reflect "the spirit" of the law, which was passed to help keep and attract production. "The legislation was drafted as a ‘win-win’ proposition by which lands would be protected, but also in many cases made more accommodating to filming," related von der Esch.
The veteran film commissioner remains optimistic that the final regulations will help producers access federal land in a more timely manner, and establish a simple and reasonable fee structure. This, she said, would represent a significant step in the U.S. anti-runaway production movement.
The NPS and the Bureau of Land Management are currently developing regulations, not only to conform to the law, but also to make filming policies more comparable among federal land agencies. The U.S. Forest Service has institutionalized and been operating under the lensing reform provisions—like using size of crew and length of stay to determine fees—for some time.
