Orange County moves forward with effort to revive local film industry

Critically acclaimed indie production The Florida Project was shot on a shoestring in Orlando and Kissimmee in 2016. Credit: Image via imdb.com

University of Central Florida senior Leah Ricketts, a local film student, told county commissioners on Tuesday that she’s dreamed of working in film since she was a child. But she, like many other film grads, is worried about finding secure work in the industry — at least locally.

Veteran actors are feeling the anxiety, too. Apopka resident Adam Vernier regularly works on TV sets these days and had roles in locally shot films like Sydney White and Beethoven’s Big Break — released in 2007 and 2008, respectively. He’s also father of two little girls, but told county commissioners that he regularly has to travel out of state in order to find consistent acting work. “I have to leave them to go shoot [for] work, and I absolutely hate having to leave my family,” he admitted.

The problem is that other cities and states, including nearby Georgia and Louisiana, offer lucrative tax incentives or rebates for filmmakers that lure them into their communities for filming — even if the TV show or film is set in Florida.

“A lot of us are tired of seeing other locations shot for Orange County. We want to see Orange County itself and see these locations that we love,” said Jason Gregory, a local screenwriter, producer and “proud” graduate of UCF’s film program.

Florida, once dubbed “Hollywood East,” used to have its own statewide film incentive program — drawing in production for blockbusters like Edward Scissorhands and My Girl — but the right-wing, Koch-founded group Americans for Prosperity lobbied to kill that program about a decade ago, tossing campaign cash at Florida’s most influential politicians to help seal the deal.

Related Stories

Florida Sen. Nancy Detert, a Republican who had supported the state’s film incentives, publicly shamed the Koch-affiliated group over the issue in a 2015 Senate committee meeting.

“You’re all on the Koch brothers’ payroll. Good for you,” Detert told AFP lobbyist Skylar Zandar, sarcastically. “I hope you’re getting paid a lot of money to show up to these meetings and say meaningless things. Obviously you’re for prosperity for yourself and not anyone else … You people serve absolutely no purpose.”

With the defunding of Florida’s film incentive program in 2016 also came the demolition of stable work for industry professionals like Vernier and Atlanta actor Chris Greene (whom we spoke to about this topic last year). Local actors are, instead, more likely these days to have to travel to Louisiana or Georgia — which offers one of the country’s most generous film incentive programs — for work.

“We have 3,000 students who graduate from film programs a year, and we’re losing over half of them to other locations,” Roseann Harrington, chief of staff for Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, told Orlando Weekly in a phone call.

Harrington, for the last year, has been meeting with a work group of industry professionals — including union leaders with IATSE and SAG-AFTRA, the Orlando Film Commission, and representatives of film programs at schools like UCF and Full Sail — to help find a way to “resurrect” the local film industry.

“We were going gangbusters in the ’90s,” Harrington told county commissioners Tuesday, noting the filming activity that came from Disney bringing in MGM Studios and Universal Orlando opening Nickelodeon Studios — a film location that, as of 2005, is no longer in operation.

After the statewide incentive program ended, filming in Florida “kind of dried up,” according to Harrington, and in Orlando, “We kind of scaled back accordingly.”

The plan to revive the industry, approved by Orange County leaders Tuesday, is to create a local film incentive program — modest in scale — that will aim to draw in small to medium film and TV productions, like Hallmark movies and independent films.

“We’re probably not going to compete with Georgia, because they’re bringing in Marvel movies,” Harrington told the Weekly. “And that’s not our goal.”

Georgia’s incentive program, funded by the state’s general funds, offers a 20 to 30 percent tax credit — rivaling even Hollywood — for productions that spend at least $500,000 in the state.

Orange County’s program, in contrast, will offer up to a 20 percent rebate with a cap of $1 million (only paid after the completion of a project) for film and TV productions that spend at least $400,000 locally — on local labor, catering, hotel rooms, equipment and other production-related expenses. It will also offer up to a 10 percent rebate for TV commercial productions — capped at $50,000 — that spend at least $250,000 locally. Documentaries, porn and political content will be excluded from eligibility.

Unlike Georgia’s program, Orange County’s will largely be funded by the county’s sizable money pot of hotel tax revenue, also known as the tourist development tax. That tax, levied on hotel stays and short-term lodging in Orange County, generated $359 million last year alone.

The film incentive program — designed to promote tourism, support economic activity within Orange County, and retain local talent — will be funded by a sliver of that: $5 million of hotel tax revenue over the next five years, or a $25 million commitment total.

“We’re probably not going to compete with Georgia, because they’re bringing in Marvel movies. That’s not our goal.”

Roseann Harrington

Eligible recipients for the rebate will have to use “best efforts” to hire local film industry professionals and will need to hire at least five students or graduates of local film-related programs who still live in Orange County in order to qualify.

“With this incentive, I [would] feel more comfortable, more secure within the job market of film,” said UCF student Ricketts, speaking in support of the program Tuesday.

Local filmmaker Eddie Venegas told the board that he built his career in Orlando and is hopeful that the new program will allow him to continue to live and work here.

“The proposed five-year $25 million TV incentive program is not a gamble,” he argued. “It’s a strategic, data-driven economic tool that counties across the country have already proven effective.”

Banking on the power of the camera

A half-dozen other municipalities in Florida — including Hillsborough, Duval, Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Pinellas counties — have already created their own local incentive programs, similarly hoping to help draw in production and spur economic activity.

The annual financial commitment for these programs in Florida ranges from $500,000 in Duval County to Broward County’s annual commitment of $12 million.

Hillsborough County, which earmarks $750,000 from tourist tax revenue for film incentives annually, managed to generate 6,000 hotel night stays last year as a result of their film incentive program. “That accounted for $31 millions’ worth of projects in the pipeline for next year, too,” said Harrington.

Still, there are some skeptics, even among those who support the organized labor community. Kristan Wong Karinen, a research analyst for the pro-labor watchdog group Good Jobs First, said film incentive programs generally end up being “economic losers” for communities.

A 2023 audit of Georgia’s program, for instance, found that their film incentives created just 19 cents per every dollar spent, despite the creation of thousands of industry jobs. “The dollar-for-dollar return on investment is almost always negative,” Wong Karenin told Orlando Weekly. A separate study by the Motion Picture Association (not exactly an unbiased party) disputed those findings, demonstrating an economic impact of $6.30 in Georgia for every $1 in film tax incentives.

Most film incentive programs, Wong Karenin says, are statewide, not local. Some of the biggest or more lucrative incentive programs for filmmakers are in Georgia, Texas, New York and California.

“After wildfires devastated Los Angeles earlier this year, the entertainment industry renewed its longstanding concern about productions fleeing California,” Wong Karenin wrote in a recent blog for GoodJobsFirst. “In response, the state more than doubled its filming tax credit program from $330 million to $750 million annually.”

Nonetheless, she said we do have some green flags going for us.

Wong Karenin told the Weekly that the structure of Orange County’s new incentive program “actually seems OK.” Unlike some programs that draw from general funds, Orange County’s will be drawing from a tourism-specific stream of revenue that (under state law, currently) can’t readily be used for other community needs.

Orange County moves forward with effort to revive local film industry

Tags: