Screen Magazine: Vol. 28, Issue 16

Screen Magazine - Index

Screen Magazine - Screen Magazine: Vol. 28, Issue 16 - Index

By Bob Hudgins, Director
Texas Film Commission
From my first days on the job here in Texas,
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I consider
commercial production to be the backbone
of this state’s overall production industry. We
made sure to include commercials, infomercials
and music videos in our new incentive program,
and we kept the spending threshold low –
just $100,000 – to make the program widely
accessible.
In future legislation, I hope to refine our
incentive program to benefit commercial
production even more. If you’re in this segment
of the business, now’s your chance to have direct
input into making those changes happen.
Without hard numbers at hand, it’s a steep
climb to convince legislators that production is
about more than features and movie stars. With
the lightning-fast schedule of commercial
production, it’s always been hard to gather
numbers from you guys. Texas is a huge state,
and unless you happen to contact this office
for assistance, you may be long gone before we
know you’re here.
But now, the McCombs School of Business at
The University of Texas at Austin has devoted a
team of seven MBA candidates, via its ENHANCE
program, to gathering the information we need
about jobs and in-state spending – because
that’s what legislators need to hear.
If you’ve shot one or more of these types of
projects in Texas since January 2006, we need
your input: commercials; corporate/instructional
videos; infomercials; PSAs; and/or music videos.
Regardless of the amount of your Texas budget
– no matter how small or large – your input is
important to this research. You may even have
already heard from the ENHANCE team but if
not, now’s the time.
Before August 24, please participate in their
very brief on-line survey at http://fcc.mccombs.
utexas.edu/professionalmba/FTC. You’ll see four
basic questions – pretty much the same ones
as in an incentives program application – and
none of it is proprietary information. In fact,
the Film Commission will receive no raw data
from ENHANCE; we’ll receive only aggregate
information at the end of the survey period.
The questions are: Total number of projects
produced in Texas in 2006 and 2007; Total
number of Texas residents employed in these
projects; Total wages spent on Texas residents
for these projects; Total production expenditures
for these projects.
So, as the old saying goes, act now! We’re all
looking at the same prize: making Texas better
for commercial production. You help us with
information, and we’ll use it to open Texas’
doors even wider. Everybody wins.
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