THE JUMP ilm Cincinnati is positioned to have its busiest year yet in 2021, despite the movie and television industry’s shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. While sets were dormant from Los Angeles to Atlanta to Toronto, project development was alive and well. “Content is king right now, and Hollywood is putting more into physical production than ever before,” says Kristen Schlotman, executive director of Film Cincinnati. “We already had the infrastructure in place here prior to the pandemic. We were just getting our groove as far as having production on a regular basis, but also more than one production at a time.” Scholtman’s nonprofit organization, founded in 1987, has film production work scheduled through spring 2022, with four movies in concurrent production this summer—the most this region has ever hosted at one time. The Ohio Motion Picture Tax Credit was established in 2009 to offer production companies a 30 percent tax break for filming in the state, leading to a movie boom here that’s included high-profile films such as The Ides of March, Carol, and Dark Waters. Schlotman, however, says Film Cincinnati is interested in something beyond the accolades. “We get a lot of headlines based on the stars attached to movies coming to town,” she says. “But what we care about are the jobs these movies create. It’s the artists, the technicians, the accountants, the business leaders—those are the people we care about working in this realm of production.” The average movie production hires between 100 and 200 people behind the scenes, in addition to those in front of the camera. Film Cincinnati offers a deep roster of local professionals to staff sets, from animal wranglers to aerial pilots. “This is an entire engine,” says Schlotman. “When a movie comes to town, they set up a production office. They lease space for four to six months. They lease parking and warehouse space where they’re building sets. Those are real dollars that impact our community.” Film Cincinnati and the Greater Cleveland Film Commission recently appointed Olsberg SPI, a creative consultancy based in London, to evaluate the Motion Picture Tax Credit’s impact on the state. The study found the gross economic impact from 2009 to 2019 to be $1.1 billion, with a $573 million direct spend in Ohio, 6,192 full-time equivalent jobs created, and a $3.09 return on every dollar from the state’s tax credit. The next goal? Uncapping the tax credit, which at 30 percent offers a maximum of $40 million statewide in tax credits per year. Schlotman points to states like Georgia, with uncapped tax incentives, where Netflix has planted deep roots. “We’ve been in the top 10 cities worldwide for film production,” she says. “There’s no reason Cincinnati can’t be in the top three markets. But in order to do so, we have to increase the tax credit to anchor those films here and to have sustainability, and then once the secret’s out this could be a huge hub for production.”
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LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION Film Cincinnati creates jobs and connections for the region’s creative community. –LEYLA SHOKOOHE
24 REALM SUMMER 2021
I L LU S T R AT I O N BY K AT I L A C K E R
