Filmmaker may be coming back

WOOD TV8 | March 25, 2009

Its been almost a year since Governor Granholm signed the state’s film incentives into law. A panel discussion today in Grand Rapids focused on the benefits of those tax incentives for Michigan’s film industry.

Four industry officials discussed the history and the future of the state’s tax breaks that brought 35 projects, 28-hundred jobs and 25-million dollars to the state last year.

Nearly a year into the incentives, Ken Droz from the Michigan Film Office says ”ideally, we’d like to think the program can run its course and be allowed to have time to breathe and to mature and for the entire industry to gets its legs before any major changes are being done to it.”

The panelists agreed that while the state is staying ahead of other states like New Mexico and Louisiana, more work has to be done to build infrastructure and train workers.

Dori DePree, Head of Education Outreach for TicTock Studios says that Michigan’s blue collar work force can be trained to fill the jobs “so its not that we’re training people to do new things, its just saying this is what you’ve already done, this is what you know how to do, and hopefully you love to do, you can do this on a film as well.”

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Ken Droz from the Michigan Film Office says a “major filmmaker who came last year is thinking about coming again next year”.

Clint Eastwood?? Drew Barrymore?? No further comments or details were offered.

That news today out of a panel discussion on tax incentives and the Michigan Film Industry.

http://blogs.woodtv.com/2009/03/25/filmmaker-may-be-coming-back/