Filmmakers focus on Columbia

Temple@TheColumbiaStar.com

Kevin Bacon sings at Willys with the Tom Sylvester Quartet at the opening party of the movie Death Sentence. Photo by Fred Delk

$20 million, according to Jeff Monks, South Carolina Film Commissioner.

Movie deals are notorious for questionable accounting and unprotected profits. But beyond the inside haggling over who gets what, in the end movies have to sell, and the public is famous for its fickle tastes. Point being, Hollywood is high-risk.

Hollywood needs to hear about location opportunities with low taxes, low rents, and low wages, while they also hear about high talent, high production skills, and high standards. South Carolina is beginning to deliver.

The movie industry worldwide is going through a funding shift. Over the past two years, hedge funds, private-equity funds, and investment banks have been getting into the movie business in a big way, more than $4 billion in movie financing.

The fresh $4 billion may be the largest outside stake in Hollywood, ever, but Hollywood is still a $50 billion industry. To draw some of that $50 billion to South Carolina, Governor Sanford pushed for incentives attractive to filmmakers.

In South Carolina, as long as it's not over $1 million, whatever a person is paid in a film qualifies for a 20% wage rebate to the production company. Also, if the film's total production costs come to at least $1 million, the supplies bought in South Carolina can expect a 30% rebate. There is no sales tax on anything bought in South Carolina as long as the buying tops $250,000. For hotel stays, there is no accommodations tax. In other words, every day is a tax holiday.

What's missing is what's offered in Wilmington and Charlotte, N.C., large movie studio spaces and soundstages. In Wilmington for more than 20 years, the Screen Gems/EUE Studios building is the largest and most sophisticated in this part of the country.

In Charlotte's South End, a new one-stop shop for filmmakers is in the form of The Film Foundry. The Film Foundry's tenants generate movies with eight-figure budgets. Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius , for instance, was put together there in 2004. In the same building, South End Studio Assets rents equipment, South End Post and Design does post-production, while Carolina Pictures puts together the movie deals.

Here in the Midlands, just south of Frink Street in Cayce, is the beginning of what's needed. Clif Springs' Genesis Media is putting up a 10,000-square-foot soundstage that should be available by the end of October.

To maintain the vigil for who's likely to be filming in town or for who's likely to be hiring for the next locally produced film, follow the South Carolina Film Commission at www.filmsc.com, or call 737.0490. By John Temple Ligon

A Kevin Bacon sighting was reported last Saturday night from the Art Bar on Park Street. A local mathematics teacher and her history teacher friend,two movie buffs, said Kevin Bacon, in fact, looked just like Kevin Bacon. Such sightings of familiar film faces are sure to become more common in Columbia.

In July, Governor Sanford's tax package to attract film production kicked into gear. In response, South Carolina has five big-budget feature films in production this fall, plus a television pilot in Charleston. The films run in production costs anywhere from $2.5 million to