Prince George's County Film Festival: developing an ecosystem supporting digital media production

Compared to Sundance, Cannes, or the Toronto International Film Festival among others, hearing that Prince George's County, Maryland has launched an annual film festival might sound like a joke ("With film festival, Prince George’s makes a bid for the silver screen," Washington Post).  

I think it's a great idea.

From the article:

Prince George’s County didn’t feel like a place to make movies when actress Kike Ayodeji grew up. She loved film festivals, but she had to drive to D.C. and Philadelphia or fly to Los Angeles to reach them. The first film to represent Prince George’s that came to mind for her was a 2020 documentary about the county’s long list of accomplished basketball players.

By the time it debuted, a once-modest local community of directors and performers had grown considerably, backed by the county’s film office, which opened in 2013. The documentary film dubbed Prince George’s a “Basketball County.” Now, these artists think Prince George’s can be a county for filmmakers, too.

They will make that pitch at the Prince George’s Film Festival, the first county-sponsored film festival running this week from Thursday to Sunday. To the county’s filmmakers, it’s an underdog story fit for Hollywood. Next to the iconic scenes of the District, Prince George’s traditionally attracted little attention from large film and TV productions.

Creating a media production community.  In "Revisiting stories: cultural planning and the need for arts-based community development corporations as real estate operators" (2018, original piece 2009) I distinguish between between arts as consumption (going to museums to see art produced by dead people) and arts as production (people producing art and design products), and quote from a paper by John Montgomery on the development of multifaceted arts districts (Montgomery [2003], "Cultural Quarters as Mechanisms for Urban Regeneration. Part 1: Conceptualising Cultural Quarters," Planning, Practice & Research, 18:4).

As pointed out in the Post article, if you want to develop a functioning if not thriving film community, you need to support its development, and a film festival is an element that does.  

Another way to think about this is in terms of what the book Strategic Marketing for Not For Profit Organizations calls publics. The author says all organizations have three publics:

the input public that gives you resources; the throughput public that does that work; and the output public to whom your efforts are addressed.

In terms of media production (film, television, digital), the throughput public is the group of people: writers; producters; directors; production staff; actors; etc., that do the work.  

It's also a way to promote local theaters and spaces within the county ("Mount Rainier aims to recapture the Kaywood Theater as a cultural anchor," 2018) and even open air community film events ("Utah Film Society Summer Film series a deep dive of documentaries on public lands issues") that don't have to exclusively focus on fun entertainment type films.

 

Although that's not what the festival is doing, at least initially. It's only showing films at National Harbor and Bowie State University. National Harbor provides some glitz whereas the Publik Playhouse does not...

Montpellier France trams, livery design by Christian Lacroix 

Creating a community that is design forward.  In my series of articles on how to leverage the Purple Line light rail program, I suggest that the Purple Line can be utilized to "to rebrand Montgomery and Prince George's Counties as Design Forward."

This film festival can be an element of such a strategy.

Leveraging community cable and other public facilities to support digital media production.  In "What would be a "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for DC's cultural ecosystem" one of the points is that DC could way better leverage its community cable networks, the way that New York City does.  No reason why PGC can't do it, even if DC won't.  From that piece:

29.  Reposition and relaunch city operated cable channels as a network comparable to what NYC does with "NYC Life" which has great programming, and a locally produced equivalent of CSPAN's BookTV and "American History TV" programming on weekends.

There are tons of great presentations all the time in DC.  By capturing them on film they can reach broader and bigger audiences.

Boston Central Library broadcast studio.  Image from Boston Magazine.

30.  Create broadcast studios for tv and radio at the Central Library.  WGBH-TV does this in Boston ("WGBH studio and cafe to open at Boston Public Library," Boston Globe).

Separately, I've argued that public radio stations like WPFW-FM could be co-located at the Central Library, comparable to  KCPW-FM in Salt Lake City.

31.  Add broadcast capabilities to cultural facilities around the city including library branches and university auditoriums.  This would support programming on a "DC Life" channel comparable to NYC Life and CSPAN.

BRIC has created a studio at the Coney Island branch of the Brooklyn Library system.  A radio station and recording studio is located in the Montreal North cultural and community center library facility. 

 

From "Neighborhood libraries as nodes in a neighborhood and city-wide network of cultural assets":

 

The Chicago Public Library has a teen recording studio called YOUmedia.  The renovation plans for the South Shore Branch include a YouMedia studio and recording facility ("South Shore Library Set To Get $2.5 Million Upgrade With New Recording Studio And More," Block Club Chicago).

 

The Helsinki (Finland) Library System has two especially innovative programs. Library 10, a special library focused on music and culture, started as a program located in the city's multi-functional  CableFactory arts center, but has since been relocated to a different site. In addition to its book and media collection, the library provides space and equipment for the production and presentation of independently-produced work.

Meetingpoint is an experimental library without books, which provides technical assistance and guidance for digital communications and living in a digitally-connected society. Meetingpoint also develops digital communications platforms for organizations, with a focus on civic participation. 

Both programs have extended hours, open as early as 8am and close as late as 10pm. Both programs are seen as models for helping to develop new ways of developing programs, organizing space, and serving patrons for the new Central Library.

Another media specific but non-library program that should be reviewed for ideas includes the Podcast Garage in Boston ("The Podcast Garage celebrates a year," Boston Globe)

Here's a way to better promote independent movie theaters: INTERVIEW: Ethan Hawke to screen his film 'Blaze' at the Byrd Theatre on Oct. 6, followed by Q&A session

Years ago, then Mayor Gray somehow managed to get rights for the Lincoln Theatre in DC to show, when it was still first run, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig.  It was awesome to go there and see it.

I've written about the Byrd Theatre and other independent theaters (cinemas) elsewhere across the country.

Image from Richmond Style Weekly.

Because of how the distribution of new movies works, it's very difficult for independent cinemas to show the newest movies, unless they are part of a chain ("The Scale of the Screen: Auditorium Size and Number in the American Movie Theater," Media Fields Journal).

I guess there are two types of independents: (1) one-offs, like the Avalon Theater in DC, the Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland, or the Byrd Theatre in Richmond (and of course, many others); and (2) small chains that focus on specialty films and documentaries, "auteurs," etc. as opposed to the "blockbuster" films produced by the big studios.

With the latter, there are small chains, like the Cinema and Drafthouse Group or Icon, and even big ones, like the Landmark Theaters owned by Sony.

Anyway, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Ethan Hawke will be screening and talking about his movie "Blaze," at an event at the Byrd Theatre in Carytown (on it's own Carytown is one of the best independent commercial districts between Philadelphia and Atlanta), on October 6th.

Hawke didn't star in the movie, which is about an obscure country music artist, he produced and directed it ("Ethan Hawke's beautiful Blaze feels like flipping through an old album," National Post).

What a great way to attract attention to the theater and to Carytown commercial district.

The theatre somehow has leveraged the fact that Hawke is in Richmond, currently filming "The Lonely Bird."

What a great idea to try to leverage going forward.  When movies are being shot in your community, as part of the "community benefits" negotiated with the production firm over tax credits and other inducements, they should include the provision of events like this, at independent theaters, as a way to promote the artists involved in the production, their ouevre, and the local independent cinema ecosystem.

The Untold Story Behind Southern California’s Aerospace Industry; BLUE SKY METROPOLIS Premieres July 14 on KCET

In the vein of writing about how regional history needs to be explained and documented in part through "film," and how a number of PBS stations produce such programming ("Columbia's Promise documentary on WMPT as another example of the importance of public television"), KCET-TV/Public Media Group of Southern California has produced such a series on the history of the aerospace industry in Southern California.

Broadcast of the four-part series starts this Sunday.

From the press release:

BLUE SKY METROPOLIS is the untold story of how aerospace was central to the growth of California and its emergence as an economic power. The documentary miniseries focuses on the people behind the aerospace movement and will feature many of the current major players in the aerospace industry in California, which is the hub of modern day aerospace engineering.  

The aerospace century will unfold through the lives and words of the men and women who created it: John Northrop, Glenn Martin, Donald Douglas, Amelia Earhart, Howard Hughes, Walt Disney and Wernher Von Braun.

The Aerospace Century begins in 1910 with the Los Angeles International Air Meet - only the second public showcase of powered flight in the world. The series chronicles the epic mobilization during World War II - when two million workers assembled 300,000 aircraft. It traces the Cold War emergence of the “military-industrial complex” as a nation grappled with the threat of nuclear annihilation. Stories play out via radio recordings, newsreels, industrial films, and oral history excerpts.  

More than 60 people were interviewed for the series including writers, historians, corporate executives, members of the armed forces, astronauts, scientists, engineers and even the current Mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti. The series visits iconic locations representing the industry’s past, present and future - from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Griffith Observatory to Virgin Orbit, SpaceX and Relativity, a recent start-up founded by twenty-somethings who build rockets with 3-D printers.

Episodes of BLUE SKY METROPOLIS will be telecast as follows on KCET (subject to change*):

“WINGS: Aviation Takes Flight in Early Los Angeles” – Sun., July 14 at 8 p.m.

Aviation takes flight in early Los Angeles, becoming an industry of dreamers, risk takers and entrepreneurs. The region is America’s “arsenal of democracy” during World War II, as two million workers build 300,000 aircraft. Critics see an unhealthy alliance developing between the federal government and aircraft manufacturers.

“THE BIG CHILL: The Cold War Fuels Business and Anxiety” – Sun., July 21 at 8 p.m.

The Cold War and Pentagon dollars fuels the explosive growth of modern Los Angeles and creates the military-industrial-complex. Entire suburbs are built in record time to house defense industry workers, but covenants restrict non-white races from living there. Fear of nuclear annihilation spawns a new genre for Hollywood as ‘science fiction’ movies become a box office goldmine.

“A SPACE ODYSSEY: Southern California Spearheads Mankind’s Greatest Achievement” – Sun., July 28 at 8 p.m.

The triumphant and tragic Space Race unfolds in first-hand accounts of those who pioneered the technology and built the hardware that made possible mankind’s greatest achievement. Meanwhile, the military-industrial-complex expands unchecked.

“BACK TO THE FUTURE: A New Space Age Dawns in Southern California” – Sun., Aug. 4 at 8 p.m.

The end of the Cold War brings massive layoffs but tech billionaires choose Southern California to launch their space companies. Though committed to the “democratization” of space, SpaceX and Virgin Orbit include the Pentagon as a major customer.

Viewable outside of Southern California.  Following over-the-air broadcast, each episode will stream on the free KCET app (available on Roku and Apple TV), the PBS Video app (available on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, the App Store and Google Play), as well as on the PBS SoCal YouTube channel, and on the KCET-TV and PBS SoCal websites.

Columbia's Promise documentary on WMPT as another example of the importance of public television

The past entry "Culture planning at the metropolitan scale should include funding for "local" documentary film making" makes the point that "community" cultural plans should cover media and the codification and presentation of local history in documentary film, using examples of how PBS stations often produce and/or broadcast such programs.

One beneficial result of the Washington area being the junction of "three states" (or two states and a district) is having three separate public television stations, one in DC, one in Maryland, and one in Virginia.

Of the three, Maryland's WMPT, which is a network of stations across the state, six in total, is the most "locally focused" in that they produce a number of programs specifically about the state, including "Direct Connection" on social matters, "State Circle" on Maryland state politics, "Chesapeake Collectibles," a local version of "Antiques Roadshow" and my two favorites, "Maryland Farm and Harvest" and "Outdoors Maryland," about agriculture and "nature."

In addition, like most over-the-air television broadcasting stations, with the switch from analog to digital television, they have three additional subchannels.  They program them with the PBS Kids feed, Create, oriented to "do it yourself," and NHK World, the English language broadcast service of Japan's primary television network.

WMPT shows local and national documentaries outside of the standard PBS programs like "American Experience," on their secondary channel primarily, but also on the main channel.

Both WETA, based in Virginia, and MPT also produce some "national programs" for PBS overall, but WETA is one of the key flagships, originating programs developed by Ken Burns among others, although WETA does produce some local programs, mostly on Washington, DC (e.g., "Washington in the 1990s") and interstitial programs like "WETA neighborhoods," which isn't limited to DC proper and on the arts.

But WETA being DC and nationally focused ends up stinting, in my opinion, when it comes to programs about Virginia, which is just as interesting as Maryland.

Other PBS affiliates in Virginia do produce programs about Virginia, such as the "Virginia Currents" program produced by Richmond's Idea Stations, but they are more likely to be rebroadcast on DC's WHUT, affiliated with Howard University, or sometimes WMPT.

DC's local news and history too, is probably underserved, by public television, because of WETA and WHUT having multiple priorities, and the general public television focus on DC is its place as the national capital and home to the federal government.  Then again, because of WHUT, there is a much greater array of African-American history and culture programming than there would be on "local" tv otherwise.

DC needs a show like "Virginia Currents," which is more broadly focused than "Maryland Farm and Harvest" and "Outdoors Maryland," which have a similar but more narrowly focused approach.

(There used to be some other educational tv stations in Northern Virginia, nominally affiliated with PBS, called Megahertz, but they sold off their over-the-air broadcast frequencies, and as a result they don't have "must carry" requirements and so their programming schedule is no longer widely available in the DC area.)

WHUT, owned by Howard University, an HBCU or historically black college/university and an educational institution is interesting in that it is less inclined to run PBS's standard schedule Sunday-Wednesday, and it runs more programs that cover African-American and political matters more generally, such as "Democracy Now."

Besides a number of programs focused on the Chesapeake Bay that have been running--and WMPT every year has a "Chesapeake Bay Week" featuring such programs--one locally-focused documentary on WMPT of late that should be of interest to urban planners is "Columbia's Promise," a history of Columbia, Maryland, a planned community that is technically not a city, created by famed developer James Rouse.


I keep missing it when it's being broadcast, but having awakened very early this morning, I watched it online.

Columbia, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2017, is a planned community in Howard County--south of Baltimore and north of DC--with planning roots in the "Garden City" movement, with the aim from the outset of being both mixed use, fully integrated, and community- and civically-centric.

It's an example well known in planning circles ("James W. Rouse's Legacy of Better Living Through Design," Smithsonian Magazine; The Jim Rouse Story," Columbia's 50th) and has some lessons about development in the suburbs.

He aimed to show a way different from sprawl, by mixing uses at the city and neighborhood scale--at the big scale with shopping, entertainment (e.g., the Merriweather Post Pavilion concert facility), office, and even industrial alongside residential, and at the neighborhood scale, around schools and integrating civic and other functions in what would otherwise be exclusively retail community-scaled shopping centers.

Ideas they developed concerning schools ended up reshaping the County's school system overall, and Howard County is now known nationally for the quality of its school system.

It has some lessons that aren't all good--even though it has a superior system of trails and paths within the community it's connected to the rest of the metropolitan area by automobile, it's not integrated into the region's high capacity transit system ("From the files: transit planning in Baltimore County"), and over time some of the neighborhood shopping centers have failed because with changes in the retail sector, such centers need to draw on larger populations and nine centers is too many for nine neighborhoods.

But it's a fascinating story regardless that is worth watching and even reading about, such as Better Places, Better Lives: A Biography of James Rouse, by Joshua Olson, which watching the documentary has motivated me to do.

A lesson from MPT about operating at larger scales when you're not in one of the nation's biggest cities.  What probably helps Maryland Public Television is the scale and heft it has from operating as a statewide system, even though Maryland is a smaller state.

By comparison, Virginia doesn't have a statewide PBS group, and therefore certain parts of the state are under-covered and underserved by public television as a result, including and surprisingly, Northern Virginia, the most populous section of the state.

By contrast, stations in "big cities," such as KCET/PBS SoCal in California, WNET in New York City, and WTTW in Chicago produce a number of locally-focused programs that cover history and/or current events, such as KCET's "Artbound" or the four nights per week  news program in Chicago, "Chicago Tonight," Mondays through Thursdays.

Maximizing the benefit of tv shows (or movies) for tourism: Top Chef, Kentucky

It's been a few years since I've watched Top Chef or Project Runway, reality shows about restauranting/cooking and fashion design respectively.

Typically such shows get some sort of financial support from local economic development and/or tourism sources.

-- "Movies and tourism and touristification ," 2009
-- "Cities and states need to extract more from tax incentive deals with television and movie productions: get ad credits ," 2014
-- "Historic Preservation Tuesday: Critical mass of rehabilitation and a big dose of tv exposure sparks community revitalization in Waco, Texas," 2016

But for me, often the shows don't adequately promote the local areas concomitant with the financial support they've received.

Cheftestants get a tour of the Maker's Mark distillery on episode 2 of "Top Chef" season 16. (Photo: Courtesy of Michael Hickey/Bravo)

According to an article in the Louisville Courier-Journal, "'Top Chef' may be over but food interest in Kentucky is just beginning," the State of Kentucky seems to have done a much better job of getting particular places shown in the Top Chef series. From the article:

For 12 weeks, between December and February, the Bravo show highlighted the state's tourism opportunities, taking viewers on a whirlwind journey through its central and southern regions as 15 chefs competed for the national title.

Episodes pointed viewers to iconic attractions like Churchill Downs in Louisville and Keeneland in Lexington. But they also introduced people to hidden gems like the Rathskeller room at the Seelbach Hotel and the houseboats of Lake Cumberland.

Tourism officials previously said they expected "Top Chef" to boost visits to and interest in the state once the season ended. But leading up to last week's finale, in which Alabama native Kelsey Barnard Clark was crowned the "Top Chef," local places featured throughout the season reported they'd already seen an uptick in business, with customers both new and old asking about their time on the show.

In Paducah, farm-to-table restaurant Freight House, owned by runner-up contestant Sara Bradley, has been taking reservations for out-of-town visitors from as close as Nashville and as far as Chicago.

In Lexington, chef Ouita Michel's family of restaurants have stayed busy through their dead season, with customers braving the cold to ask about her turn as a guest judge.

And in Loretto, Maker's Mark distillery has seen an increase in customers at its restaurant, Star Hill Provisions. A new common question for the distillery's tour guides: "Were you there when they filmed?"...

To accommodate "Top Chef," a Kentucky tourism board last year approved up to $3.5 million in production incentives for the show, promising to refund the production company a portion of any eligible costs it spent in the state.

At the time, the incentive marked a drastic jump from sponsorship or rebates the show had reportedly received in other filming locations.

Seems like it will be worth watching the programs to see how local attractions and places have been covered, and to use that as a model for communities negotiating with tv and movie producers in the future.

Another thing the State of Kentucky Tourism agency has done was to create a webpage focusing on the program and the places they visited. 

-- Better in the Bluegrass

That's one of the best ways to leverage the exposure, along with working with various attractions, restaurants, etc. for specific promotions.  Such as these (via the LCJ):

• Mint Julep Tours — The Louisville-based tour company will run a special "Top Chef"-inspired tour on three dates in 2019: June 13, Sept. 12 and Oct. 17. The tour takes guests on a progressive dinner to three restaurants connected to the show. It costs $119 per person, plus taxes and fees. 
• Stone Fences Tours — The Lexington-based company has a Culinary Trail of the Commonwealth tour that takes guests to seven stops connected to the show, including Keeneland in Lexington, Maker's Mark in Loretto and Decca in Louisville. The tour lasts approximately 12 hours and costs $225 per person.

Culture planning at the metropolitan scale should include funding for "local" documentary film making

Yesterday's Post mentions the IndieGoGo crowdfunding initiative to help fund a locally-produced documentary on a Washington-area music legend, "Late D.C. guitar legend Danny Gatton is the subject of an upcoming documentary."

It made me realize this is yet another area to consider under the "media, communications, and broadcasting" element that I have been thinking about in terms of yet another element that should be included in a more wide-ranging framework for culture master planning processes (e.g., see "Should community culture plans include elements on higher education?").

I have been thinking about the "media" element because in today's entertainment-dominated media world, for profit television and radio do very little "public affairs programming."  It's been left to public television and radio, such as WAMU-FM, the area NPR affiliate, which like many NPR and PBS stations, does a lot of local news and other programming.

By contrast to our NPR affiliate, DC and Northern Virginia are somewhat underserved by "public television" because we have two stations, plus the Maryland Public Television network is a third, and none of the stations do much in the way of truly local programming.

WETA doesn't do as much as they could, because they are nationally-focused, but they have done good programs on recent history, such as "Washington in the 60's" (70s; 80s) on the social history of the area by decade, and shown various documentaries on Marion Barry and others.

WHUT doesn't because of their HBCU related mission.  I mentioned this in a recent blog post on civic knowledge and voting in a section on "newspapers and media."

MPT does programs related to Maryland, such as the "State Circle" state politics program, "Maryland Outdoors and Farming," and "Chesapeake Collectibles," a locally-oriented version of "Antiques Roadshow."

WETA also presents short programs on area neighborhoods, but the programs vary considerably in their quality (at least IMO). I didn't mention the latest one, even though it had some bright spots, like with Eastern Market and Archibald's Walk alley, because overall I wasn't impressed.

There is also the Megahertz public television stations in Northern Virginia, but they are pretty grassroots, and more oriented to rebroadcast of foreign television news and entertainment programming and are nationally distributed.

Communities ought to consider developing funding programs to support the production of documentaries on local topics.  Otherwise, stories aren't cataloged and preserved, and knowledge is lost.

Aerial of the mall maybe dating to the 1980s.

Tonight, PBS SoCal is premiering a documentary ("HENRY T. SEGERSTROM: IMAGINING THE FUTURE" )on Henry Segerstrom.  His family farmed in Orange County, and with the rise of suburban development ("sprawl") he shifted the lands to real estate development, including South Coast Plaza shopping center, which is supposed to be the most successful retail shopping malls in the nation, with annual sales approaching $2 billion(!).

Mr. Segerstrom, in part because of his interest, but also because of how it helped Orange County and his projects, was a major funder of arts programs in Orange County, including the creation of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts (pictured right), a multi-building facility in Costa Mesa.

How many people in Orange County know that story?

A photo taken of the groundbreaking ceremony for South Coast Plaza.

Besides programs on the area's music history, and fortunately some have already been produced ("Salad Days | A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC (1980-90);" "Punk the Capital"), the DC area could benefit from focused creation of objective documentaries on a wide variety of topics, including the history of local land use development, featuring people like Til Hazel and the Lerner family, the Smith family in Crystal City, the Carrs and other members of the Growth Machine, like Bud Doggett (a parking magnate) active in the DC real estate market.  Douglas Jemal.  Meanwhile, like Henry Segerstrom, the earlier generation has already died off.

Having a general funding stream for such programs makes it easier to produce them.  While there are various national funding programs for documentary film development, I don't think there are many such funds for locally-focused documentaries.  They are needed.

Cities and states need to extract more from tax incentive deals with television and movie productions: get ad credits

Recently, there was an issue in Maryland, where the "national politics" tv show "House of Cards" is filmed--not in the national capital--about the level of tax incentives received by the show from the state. I wrote about it here "Economic impact studies are often overstated: impact of "House of Cards" in Maryland."

But this is an issue in many places.  Even the "Tonight Show" received tax incentives to move to NYC from Los Angeles, even though the new host and his sidekicks were already based in NYC and it would have been difficult for them to relocate.

For example, the ABC-TV show Nashville gets state and local tax incentives ("‘Nashville’ incentives for third season up in air," Nashville Tennessean) and like the pressure House of Cards put on Maryland to provide more money, the producers of Nashville have the same issue and are threatening to move the production of the show to Austin, Texas ("With 'Nashville' renewed for third season, attention turns to keeping show in Music City," Tennesean). From the article:

The future of "Nashville" as a local product partly depends on economic incentives from state and local government. For season 2, the state contributed $12.5 million, Metro gave $500,000 and the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp. added $125,000.

But a newly trimmed annual state budget leaves just roughly $3 million in the Tennessee film incentives fund, which would require more funding from Metro and the CVC to get closer to the $13.1 million provided for season 2.

There are two main reasons for providing tax incentive funding for such production. The first is "economic development" and the multiplier effect from having the show in terms of the development of the local broadcast and film production industry and the number of people employed.

The second is the economic value of tourism benefits. For example with the Nashville show, a survey found that of recent visitors, one in five listed the show as an influence on their choice to visit Nashville. Another illustration is the impact of movies on locales, such as "Field of Dreams" and Iowa ("Field of Dreams' Setting, Tourist Magnet in Iowa, Is to Be Sold," New York Times) or Santa Barbara's wine country vis-a-vis the movie "Sideways" not just the increase in tourism ("They're still toasting 'Sideways' in Santa Barbara wine country," Los Angeles Times) but also the impact on the sales of the wine featured throughout the movie, pinot noir ("A film's boon to pinot noir," New York Times).

Recommendation: Require tourism promotion ads within tv shows, DVDs, etc. as part of the tax incentive deal.  While film tax incentive programs are acknowledged through logos and mentions at the end of the program within the credits, for the most part the impact on tourism is less direct, more circuitous.

I say require that promotional ads are included in the broadcast of the tv show, on the DVD, etc.

Of course, that would make shows like House of Cards and Nashville look funny when the ads are from the State of Maryland/Baltimore and not Washington, DC and from Austin, Texas and not Nashville, Tennessee.

Or I can't remember what movie I caught a little bit of, and it turned out it was filmed in Toronto, because I saw a street sign, and the City of Toronto has one of the most distinctive forms of street sign--some have specific place identifiers and graphic treatments, but all use the same physical format.

Similarly, the Castle tv show is not filmed in NYC, but in Los Angeles, based on the the LA MTA buses that drive by on occasion.

This is the tv ad for Ann Arbor from the Michigan tourism promotion program campaign, "Pure Michigan."  I think the ads could be better but you get the idea...

Economic impact studies are often overstated: impact of "House of Cards" in Maryland

=======
Update:  I didn't realize that part of the reason that NBC relocated the Tonight Show to New York City was the receipt of a tax break to the tune of 30% of the cost of production for the show, according to the Associated Press ("Tax Break Helps NYC Lure 'The Tonight Show' Home").  From the story:

The tax incentives were inserted into the state budget by Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration in early 2013 as NBC was debating dropping the show's then-host, Jay Leno, for Fallon and potentially leaving Los Angeles to return to New York, where the show started in 1954.

The language of the 30 percent annual tax credit was remarkably specific: It would only benefit a show that had filmed at least five years in another state before moving to New York (check), spends at least $30 million in production costs (check) and films in front of a studio audience of at least 200 people (check). In other words: "The Tonight Show."

Again, this is an odd circumstance.  The marketing and promotion value of the show being produced in New York City is considerable.  Although at the same time, Johnny Carson's frequent cracks about problems in New York City when he did the "The Tonight Show" in NYC was damaging.  See "There's Johnny" from Vanity Fair Magazine.

==========

I am not against tax credits for television and movie production, although I think it's extremely important for local and state jurisdictions to work to maximize the local benefits from the credits in at least three ways:

1.  in terms of economic impact from spending associated with the film

2.  development of local production capacity and the support industry associated with broadcasting and television and film production;

3.  marketing benefits (although I joke that detective shows featuring lots of murders can be counter-productive for tourism; also see "They're still toasting 'Sideways' in Santa Barbara wine country" from the Los Angeles Times)--some jurisdictions are getting smarter about requiring certain logos and mentions in the final production, etc.

It's not clear that this is done as systematically as it should be

Today, newspapers report ("'House of Cards' wants millions more in tax breaks, or it could turn some other state into D.C.," Washington Business Journal) that the Netflix program "House of Cards" is playing hardball with regard to tax credits from the State of Maryland.  The article states that the economic value of the production is considerable:

O'Malley has touted the economic impact of "House of Cards," which state officials say has created 6,000 jobs and pumped $250 million into Maryland's economy.

But I think this figure is highly overstated.  For example, the USA cable production "Burn Notice," which was filmed in Miami for seven seasons and ended its run last year, was said to spend as much as $31 million according to reporting, "'Burn Notice' finale brings curtain down on South Florida production," in the Miami Herald. 

Similarly, the New York Times reported on the economic impact on New York City of the cancellation of "Law and Order" ("Dropping of 'Law and Order' Leaves Hole in Economy").  From the article:

Katherine Oliver, the commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting, said that every year the show provided jobs to about 4,000 people, including one-day acting roles. Its spending totaled about $79 million annually, she said, including things like coffee and bagels, boom microphones and duct tape. During its 20-year run, that impact amounted to as much as $1 billion or more, she said.

According to a 1999 Baltimore Sun story ("Series finale is news to them") about the cancellation of "Homicide: Life in the Street," the total economic impact is about 2.5 times the cost of production of the program or movie.

Even with a healthy multiplier, the numbers for "House of Cards" seem to be faulty.  It turns out they are.  Further research finds a piece in the Maryland Politics blog of the Post, "How did ‘House of Cards’ get millions in Maryland tax credits?," the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development uses a multiplier number of just over 2x production spending.  From the article:

Production expenditures topped $63.6 million, and the Department of Business and Economic Development estimates that the season had a $138 million economic impact. More than 1,800 Maryland businesses were involved and nearly 2,200 Marylanders were hired as cast, crew or extras.

On that basis, spending $12 million on tax credits seems to have a pretty good economic return.