New Jersey native Pieter Gaspersz moved to New Orleans from Los Angeles about three years ago. The actor and producer says he came to Louisiana to work on a two-picture deal that ended up falling through, but he decided to stick around nonetheless.
“It was beyond just the tax credits,” he says. “It was the lifestyle.”
As Business Report details in a feature from the current issue, Gaspersz isn’t the only professional in the industry who feels that way about south Louisiana. MovieMaker magazine in January named Baton Rouge the best small city in America to live and work as a filmmaker. New Orleans ranked second.
But Gaspersz and his colleagues are nervous about the increasing scrutiny the state’s film incentives are under. He’s in the process of raising money for three films that he hopes to shoot in the state, and any perceived instability in the program will only make that more difficult.
Film industry insiders and supporters insist they’re willing to support reasonable changes to the program. But they don’t want to be treated like a political football, especially since it isn’t really their fault that state lawmakers could be facing billion-dollar deficits for years to come.
Former Louisiana Entertainment Executive Director Sherri McConnell says taxpayers have spent about $1.5 billion subsidizing film and television production since 2002, an estimate she concedes is “probably a little low.”
The economic impact on the communities where filming happens clearly is positive, McConnell stresses. In 2012, according to the most recent Louisiana Economic Development-commissioned study available, the film industry spent more than $717 million dollars in Louisiana and supported almost six thousand jobs at an average “annual” wage of more than $50,000.
However, nearly two-thirds of the spending is concentrated in New Orleans. The jobs mostly are temporary, although experienced workers can stay busy by moving from project to project. And according to the state’s report, Louisiana’s treasury suffered a net loss of about $168 million in the most recent budget year studied.
Other states have looked at similar numbers and scaled back their film incentives, only to see the industry move to greener pastures almost immediately.
“This is why we need to help fix this program, if we think it needs fixing, before the legislature takes hold of it with a knee-jerk reaction,” McConnell says. “Hopefully, we’re ahead of it in Louisiana, because we like this industry.”
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