Two New Articles Featuring Ivan Schwarz
November 27th, 2007
Push is on to build region’s prospects in film industry
By Jay Miller
November 19, 2007
Filming shots for “Spider-Man 3” last year brought a little bit of Hollywood to the North Coast for a few weeks, but the new head of the Cleveland Film Commission said he believes the city is on the verge of bigger things cinematically.Ivan Schwarz, who became executive director of the film commission in August after two decades in the film business as a location manager and producer, envisions a local industry that could support 750 full-time jobs. To that end, Mr. Schwarz said last week in an interview with Crain’s that Nehst Studios, a newly formed film production and distribution company in New York, is interested in creating a production center in Cleveland that would hire and train people locally for film production jobs.
The company’s president, Larry Meistrich, last month held a filmmaking “boot camp and pitch session” in Cleveland that attracted about 40 people, Mr. Schwarz said. Also last month, a story in The Hollywood Reporter said Nehst Studios and two film company partners had assembled a $250 million production fund to finance television series and feature films in the $1 million to $50 million range.
Mr. Larry Meistrich, who was a production executive on films such as “Sling Blade” and “Count on Me,” did not return three phone calls before press time last week.
As someone who himself spent years scouting locations for feature films while working for studios such as HBO Films and 20th Century Fox Television, Mr. Schwarz said he believes the region has every backdrop filmmakers look for — except “mountains and deserts,” he noted.
The missing piece to make Cleveland and other parts of Ohio into active filmmaking centers, Mr. Schwarz maintains, is a state investment tax credit for film and television productions. Legislation for such a tax credit is in the works, though this kind of credit has failed before, most recently in 2006, in the lame-duck days of the Bob Taft administration.
“This is urgent for us because we have a company that may go away” if the state doesn’t offer the tax credit, Mr. Schwarz said.
A bill has been introduced by state Rep. Thomas Patton, R-Strongsville, that would grant a 25% state income tax credit on investments of $300,000 or more in motion picture or television production. The bill has been stalled in a House committee, said Nathanael Jonhenry, Rep. Patton’s legislative aide, because of concerns among some lawmakers that the incentive would cost the state revenue.
Mr. Schwarz said he hopes that notion can be dispelled and the legislation can move ahead. He argues that because the tax credit would go to film producers who bring new investment into the state, the credit would not diminish any revenue the state currently expects to receive.
Taking a cue from Louisiana
Mr. Schwarz’s desire for such legislation comes as filmmakers flee high-cost production centers such as Los Angeles and New York for states such as Louisiana and New Mexico, which have used tax incentives to become major film production centers themselves.
A December 2006 study done for the Louisiana Department of Economic Development found employment in the film industry there was growing by 23% a year since that state’s film tax incentive was created in 2002. Film companies, the report calculated, had injected $343.8 million into the state’s economy in 2005, a huge leap from $7.5 million in 2003.
In New Mexico, a $74 million, 500,000-square-foot production studio opened last February near Albuquerque in response to similar tax incentives. Albuquerque Studios was developed by Pacifica Ventures, a firm in Santa Monica, Calif., that has a financial interest in the Culver Studios complex in Los Angeles.
In his mind, Mr. Schwarz already has carved up the Cleveland Convention Center complex in downtown Cleveland into three permanent soundstages with room for editing facilities and even the catering facilities film crews need. The current convention center could become available for such use if local officials proceed with a new convention center elsewhere downtown.
Thinking small
While the film commission will continue to market Cleveland to major Hollywood filmmakers, Mr. Schwarz said he’s particularly excited about attracting Nehst, which he sees as a company that wants to nurture small, independent films.
A steady flow of smaller films, Mr. Schwarz said, would create and sustain good-paying jobs in film trades and related businesses rather than the kind of temporary boost to the hospitality industry that a film such as “Spider-Man 3” brings.
“Big movies are great,” he said. “But little ones hire more locally.”
Northeast Ohio now has a small film community, mostly producing films that may cost as little as $5,000. Local filmmaker Laura Paglin, for example, has produced films such as “NightOwls of Coventry,” a story about the 1970s on the street that’s the social center of Cleveland Heights, and “No Umbrella — Election Day in the City,” a documentary shown at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival that looks at voting problems on Cleveland’s East Side during the 2004 presidential election.
Mr. Schwarz would like to see that kind of filmmaking flourish.
“We’re not going to be New Mexico or Louisiana, but we can be significant,” he said.
Eager flimmakers
An economic impact report prepared by Team NEO, the regional business attraction nonprofit, and provided to the film commission predicts a significant economic impact if the region can develop its own pool of filmmakers and support businesses. The report said that if a film industry in Ohio produced seven films at a total cost of $100 million, it would support the equivalent of 1,728 full-time jobs.
That kind of a film center would have helped Todd Kwait. He’s a lawyer and business owner in Beachwood who just completed a documentary, “Chasin’ Gus’ Ghost,” a history of jug band music featuring a group of American-roots musicians led by John Sebastian, leader of the 1960s group The Lovin’ Spoonful.
This was Mr. Kwait’s first attempt at filmmaking, though he has been a trustee of the Ohio Independent Film Festival.
He said 25% to 30% of the 99-minute film’s content was shot by Cleveland film professionals. He would have liked to have been able to do more of the work here, but he wasn’t able to find the right equipment and facilities locally.
Mr. Kwait said he has spent about $500,000 on “Chasin’ Gus’ Ghost” so far. The film premiered at the San Francisco Jug Band Festival and was shown at the Woodstock (N.Y.) Film Festival, where it competed with 2,000 films for one of 150 showings.
Local film production professionals also want what Mr. Schwarz wants. Bernadette Gillotta, a local filmmaker and executive director of the Ohio Independent Film Festival, like many local filmmakers has found occasional work on Hollywood films. She was a production coordinator on “Telling Lies in America,” a film starring Kevin Bacon that shot in Cleveland for a month in 1996.
However, Ms. Gillotta would prefer a more locally focused industry.
“So many of those (Hollywood) companies travel with an entourage, I’m not going to get a job,” she said. “It would be nice if the upper-level jobs were opened up to us.”
http://crainscleveland.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071119/SUB1/71116037
Star power
November 26, 2007
People in Northeast Ohio like to make things, whether it’s steel, cars or sophisticated medical instruments. We don’t think we’ve got stars in our eyes when we say we’d like to see movies and TV shows added to the list, because we believe Cleveland could become an attractive film-production center with a little help from a piece of legislation in Columbus.
Ivan Schwarz, the new executive director of the Cleveland Film Commission, is a Hollywood guy by background who’s convinced that the city and the state offer the diverse and inviting backdrops filmmakers seek to engage in their craft.
Indeed, Mr. Schwarz says an opportunity is at hand to bring a newly formed film production and distribution company,
Nehst Studios of New York, to Cleveland to set up a production center that could mean hundreds of good-paying jobs for
the area.
However, for Cleveland to establish a beachhead in the competitive filmmaking business, the state of Ohio must be
willing to offer the type of financial incentives that states such as Louisiana and New Mexico already are bestowing upon
film investors and producers. Those two states are reaping the rewards of their willingness to work with film companies
that are looking to move chunks of their work from the high-cost production centers of Los Angeles and New York.
As Crain’s reporter Jay Miller noted last week, a study last December by the Louisiana Department of Economic
Development found employment in the film industry there was growing by 23% a year since its film tax incentive was
created in 2002. The same study indicated that film companies had injected nearly $344 million into the state’s economy
in 2005. And in New Mexico, a $74 million production studio opened last February near Albuquerque in response to
similar tax incentives.
The soft-spoken Mr. Schwarz tries to put Cleveland’s film prospects in the proper perspective.
“We’re not going to be New Mexico or Louisiana, but we can be significant,” he said.
Mr. Schwarz would like to build a film business locally that relies not on the occasional blockbuster, but rather on a
steady stream of productions with modest budgets so that the region can sustain the investments in equipment and
people that are needed to become a production center. To accomplish that goal, Mr. Schwarz maintains, Ohio needs to
make its tax policy as friendly to film investors as other states that covet their business.
He’s anxiously waiting for state legislators to move forward with House Bill 196, which would provide film investors with
graduated tax credits that are dependent on their level of investment. Mr. Schwarz sees some urgency to proceeding
with the measure in light of Nehst Studios’ interest in Cleveland.
“We won’t have anybody’s attention past next spring” if the legislation isn’t in place by then, Mr. Schwarz said.
Even if the Nehst opportunity wasn’t knocking, we’d be giving legislators a nudge to give this bill their consideration.
There’s no reason Ohio can’t take its place among the states that benefit from filmmakers’ moves to lower-cost
production options.
http://www.crainscleveland.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071126/SUB1/71121017