Across the street from a landscape of vacant houses and overgrown front yards, homicide detectives gather to investigate a murder. They analyze clues and debate how best to interrogate the key witnesses. Then, the director yells "Cut!" and everyone heads to a catered lunch of shrimp scampi and beef tenderloin.
The set of the gritty cop show "Detroit 1-8-7" is one of more than 100 film and television productions that have flocked to Michigan in the last two years, the result of generous tax rebates. Producers have spent nearly $350 million in the state so far, a figure expected to reach $650 million by year's end, up from $2 million in 2007, according to the Michigan Film Office. About 80% of these shoots take place in and around this iconic but much-maligned city, sprinkling a little stardust, optimism and controversy along the way.
Workers who used to build cars are learning to build sets. The entertainment sector is "a lifeboat as the auto industry adapts and restructures," says Wayne County Executive Robert A. Ficano.
Signs of activity are everywhere. Hip-looking film-school grads on bicycles run errands in an empty warehouse that once served as a Chrysler distribution center and is now a cavernous 166,000-square-foot production studio for "Detroit 1-8-7." Sets for the show, premiering on ABC Sept. 21, include a city morgue and a homicide unit with cluttered police desks and corkboards covered with mug shots.
The dilapidated Michigan Central Station, once a transportation hub, with marbled floors and Corinthian columns, has served as a symbol of urban ruination for years. It's now a key location for productions including "Transformers 3" and HBO's "Hung." On Tuesday "Hostel: Part III" and "Vamps," a horror-comedy with Sigourney Weaver, both shot in the city's neo-Gothic Masonic Temple. When "Harold and Kumar 3" finished a scene this summer that required turning a downtown street into New York City at Christmas, set designers left the fake subway entrance intact, knowing another production would soon need it.
Michigan’s film subsidies may be enhancing the state’s image and producing pockets of new economic activity, but they’re unquestionably a net loser for state taxpayers, according to a report by the Senate Fiscal Agency released this morning.
The state Treasury doled out $37.5 million in subsidies in 2009 and is expected to distribute about $100 million to the makers of TV and film productions in 2010. But the estimated additional state tax revenue generated by film-related economic activity comes to only $3.7 million in 2009 and $10.3 million in 2010, the report found.
An analysis of movie and TV job creation by the agency found that the average cost to the state per full time job in 2008 was $186,519, and $193,333 in 2009.
Senate Fiscal Agency Director Gary Olson said the new report, the most comprehensive examination of the credits to date, said the subsidies are so generous (up to 42% of production costs) that it is virtually impossible for the program to have a net positive effect on the state budget.
“That’s not to say there aren’t positive effects,” Olson said. Obviously, there are benefits to those who gain film and TV employment, he said. And the report doesn’t account for increased property and income tax revenue to local governments, he said.
But the cost of providing the subsidies falls entirely on the state, Olson said.
“It’s very hard to see how it ever benefits the state’s bottom line,” he said.
Geez, part one of the story sounds so good until part two tears it down. I am not good at figuring all these numbers out, but I still can't believe it's not a "plus" to film there. At least it IS something right?
TIS
"Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind. War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." JFK
