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Production Rises in San Francisco by Doniphan Blair
On set in San Francisco shooting 'Blue Jasmine', Woody (Allen) confers with Kate (Blanchett) to craft a performance that won her the Best Actress Oscar. photo: courtesy anonymous
ALTHOUGH SHOOTING SLOWED SLIGHT-
ly over the last decade, 2013 was a robust year for San Francisco, according to its film office, with 6% more permits issued and an 8% increase in shooting days, over the previous year. "Blue Jasmine", directed by Woody Allen, was the biggest project.
"While I wish I could say we lured him here with our rebate, [and] that certainly helped," Susannah Robbins, Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Commission, said to me recently, "My understanding is that he loves San Francisco and wanted to set the film here."
"This was a really successful production for San Francisco," Robbins continued. "They shot for 33 days and hired 168 locals total, including background extras, and spent more than $1.5 million locally, between wages and spending on location fees, gas, lumber, hotels, car rentals, restaurants, etc."
Although "permit days" dropped from the 2006-12 average of 69-a-year, to 65 in 2012, last year, it jumped to 175, due to a massive influx of indies and TV shows. By the same token, however, spending only reached about half. Even "Blue Jasmine" didn't payout as much as it could, having brought up almost all its gear from Los Angeles.
"They rented one monitor from us," noted Videofax's Leigh Blicher, who's been in the business here since 1987. A few years ago, Videofax moved from the Inner Sunset to their much more accessible Caesar Chavez Street location, joining the burgeoning production community around the Bayshore neighborhood, one of the last light industrial zones in the City.
Shooting the web series 'SanFranLand' in Delores Park in 2013. photo: courtesy anonymous
"I should change our name to Last Minute Rentals," Leigh said with a laugh. "I think people are reluctant to make decisions or they are waiting for the weather or we are low on the food chain."
Although she recently outfitted a Brazilian television series shooting in the City, which has long figured mythically in Brazilian lore, her bread and butter is that perfect blend of corporate and commercial that has long prevailed in San Francisco.
“Car commercials pay more people in Northern California then any other (form of filmmaking),” said Tim Ranahan, of Ranahan Productions, which rents a lot of gear to producers of auto spots from their new location a half a block west of the Saul Zaentz Media Center in Berkeley, the East Bay's old and undisputed new media hub, now that the Oakland Film Center closed.
BMW was shooting all over the City with Radical Media, out of LA and NY, and Ranahan has a big shoot coming up with the Epoch agency: three days for Chase Bank, shooting two Arri Alexas and a 16mm camera, probably for a vintage look, requiring him to dust off old equipment.
But that's not all: Ranahan recently outfitted the low budget feature “The Diary of a Teenage Girl”, starring Kristen Wigg and Alexander Skarsgard, which has been shooting all over the City.
Indeed, San Francisco will appear in quite a few 2014 features, including 20th Century Fox’s "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes", "Big Eyes" directed by Tim Burton, Electronic Arts’ "Need for Speed" and Warner Brothers’ "Godzilla".
On the smaller screen, HBO’s “Looking” shot all eight episodes of its Season One in San Francisco, MTV’s "Real World" shot all of Season 29 and Amazon produced its new web series “Betas” here— not to forget the Food Network’s "The Great Foodtruck Race", which will undoubtedly be a big hit in the sometimes navel-gazing boutique-by-the-bay, and Fox’s "American Idol". For this reason, shooting days for TV series increased by 53%.
Commissioner Robbins is expecting a busy 2014 with some of a Netflix series slated for June, parts of three blockbusters in late summer, and a pair of pilots. Indeed, to make the City even more convenient, the Commission is still working to secure a space to build a stage.
Most importantly, they are part of a state-wide coalition pushing to expand the State Film Tax Credit to help staunch the flight of production from California. The recent Academy Awards were picketed for a second year in a row by visual effects artists protesting against subsidies used by foreign countries to underbid and attract work.
A Japanese crew shoots a series on Cole Stree, 2010. photo: courtesy anonymous
One added benefit of the proposed law, "California Film & Television Production Incentive", or AB 1839, is that there would be a 5% bump for productions filming outside of the LA Zone.
Introduced in February by Assemblymembers Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles) and Raul Bocanegra (D-Pacoima), it has 64 co-authors, meaning it is supported by over half the legislature, although with California's divided government, we can't take anything for granted.
"Key to our success over the next seven months will be how well we can make our collective voice—from all over California—heard loudly and clearly in Sacramento," wrote Robbins in a recent email.
"We were also lobbying up in Sacramento," said Leigh Blicher of Videofax. "I volunteered to help represent San Francisco, to show it is not just a Hollywood thing—that we in Northern California also care. Shooting should go everywhere, and the more the better."
The day after the bill was introduced, representatives from over 25 guilds, unions, studios and small media businesses descended on Sacramento and met with the Assembly's Revenue and Tax as well as Arts and Entertainment Committees, which have to approve the legislative process.
Overall support was seemed strong, according to Robbins. They are planning motions for rallies in San Francisco and more activity in Sacramento and recommend letter writing, see their site.
Cars and Northern California icons are a magical metaphorical as well as visiual combination: shown here a Marina parking lot in the shadow of the Golden Gate next to Sausalito. photo: courtesy anonymous
The Scene In San Francisco Rebate Program, which was started by Robbins predecessor, Stefanie Coyote, is also attracting more productions than ever.
Seven groups are using the rebate thus far, in this fiscal year, a huge upswing from the first six years of the program, when they had only eight productions—total!
That program helped land HBO’s "Looking". Television shows are industrial media, with lots of regular work, and anchor a community.
"It seems to me we have recovered [from the 2008 recession]' Blicher said, "There is a lot of work but its continuing effect is that budgets are thinner and thinner." All the rental houses survived in San Francisco, except for Lee Utterback, but his closure was more due to the restructuring from film to digital.
"It is hard on everyone," Blicher said, "Both the rate of change and more and more people have their own gear. What we are asked to provide is a lot of little pieces—not a great way to make money."
"We have to make sure we support the high-end," she emphasized, "Which means putting all the money we make back into gear. If we keep doing that, and we only guess one out of five wrong [of which high-end piece of gear to purchase], we are golden."
Although the big Silicon Valley companies have their own in-house, see CineSource article "Go Ahead, Call It Cisco TV", they need back up and the smaller ones and start-ups don't, which brings Blicher good work.
"I don't know if the overall volume will increase but the new companies need outsiders to do their work. It is a good part of the market, which won't get any smaller," she said.
Meanwhile on the indie and doc front, Sara MacPherson, a graduate of the SF Film Commission's film incubator, The Film Collective, had her doc "Stable Life" world premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
The Film Collective has been going strong since 2011 and now has nine groups working on screenplays, documentaries, web series, short films and more. Unfortunately, it has to move from its 134A Golden Gate Avenue location, in the now-ooming Tenderloin District.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Film Society and Kenneth Rainin Foundation have just selected 15 finalists for their latest round of more than $300,000 in grants to be awarded to one or more narrative feature film projects. Alas, indies are small beer fiscally.
"I would like to see more TV production," said Blicher, making the question how to be more attractive in that regard. "It goes on for a long time and it is all good when it happens even if we get nothing as a rental company, it is good for the community,"
Doniphan Blair is a writer, designer and filmmaker, and can be reached .Posted on Mar 21, 2014 - 07:04 AM