Agency wants to put the Triangle in movies

DURHAM -- Two Durham video producers are out to lure more movie business to the Triangle with a new agency to be fully operating by the middle of September.

Sandy Freeman and Rob Shoaf, principals in the Freeman Group production company, said Monday that they intend to promote a 13-county region as a shooting location and by developing a local "crew base" producers can draw upon.

"We really want to build a new industry in this area," Freeman said. "It's really an untapped gold mine."

While Durham has often served as a movie backdrop over the past 30 years and the Convention and Visitors Bureau has had its own film office, the Triangle overall has lagged behind other regions in the state, they said. Multi-county film-promotion agencies operate in the Charlotte and Triad areas, in the mountains and in Eastern North Carolina.

This is an opportune time for the Triangle, Freeman and Shoaf said, because the state incentives are going up Jan. 1 for production companies with project budgets of at least $250,000. Among those incentives are a state income-tax rebate increase from 15 percent to 25 percent on most goods and services purchased in-state - including per diem expenses and fringe benefits paid to actors and crew - with the cap increased from $7.5 million to $20 million.

Not everybody is happy with the increasing incentives.

Companies get the rebate even if they have no state-tax liability, said state Rep. Paul Luebke, D-Durham.

"It is unfair to the many North Carolina small and large businesses that pay their income taxes with no break," Luebke said.

"My problem is the granting of credits that comes down to the state writing a check," said Robert Orr, director of the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law, a Raleigh think tank. He calls movie tax credits a "huge waste of money."

On the plus side

Others see more to be gained, on the local level.

"When a movie comes into a jurisdiction, it unloads a ton of cash," said Aaron Syrett, director of the state film office. "They're pumping money into the local economy from day one."

Freeman and Shoaf said their immediate goal is to attract movie and TV production. Their long-range hope is to be a catalyst for studio construction and productions developed and carried out in the Triangle, largely by local residents.

Hollywood producer Thom Mount said it's a good idea.

"I talked to a number of motion-picture and television people in California, and they are gung-ho about it," said Mount, a Durham native who produced the locally filmed Kevin Costner hit "Bull Durham."

Smart film crews

The region, which covers the area from Moore County north through Person and Warren County south through Johnston, has a great variety of locations and a labor force well-versed in electronic production, Mount said. "People who are smart," he said.

The expansion of motion-picture making from film to video and computer animation, and of movies through television into video gaming has meant a "huge shift in ... the kind of people we're looking for," Mount said.

Freeman and Shoaf said they've been working up the idea for about a year, since working as location managers for the feature movie "Main Street" shot in Durham last year. The cast and crew spent 10 weeks in town, injecting about $4 million into the city's economy, Shoaf said.

The Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau has merged its film-industry marketing with the nonprofit Film Commission, according to DCVB chief executive Shelly Green, with the $50,000 it has budgeted annually for promoting Durham now going to the wider operation. Carolyn Carney, who has managed DCVB's film office, will become a Film Commission staff member, and the Commission will have an office at DCVB, Freeman said.