Over the past years, I have noticed an increasing amount of shows/movies filmed in the state of Georgia. CNN Center and The Weather Channel are also headquartered from the state’s capital, Atlanta.
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Our state government has tax law to incentivize it and the state itself has a lot of different types of areas and pretty diverse topography so you can find a lot of different environments for filming as well without having to go all that far.
You can go from mountains to Foothills to Rolling Hills to plains to beach to Marshland all within 200 Mi of each other.
With the exception of Atlanta in the surrounding areas were also a relatively low cost State as well. Like for example in my area our gasoline never even hit $5 a gallon and it’s back under $4 a gallon now.
CNN is there because Ted Turner’s TBS was based in Atlanta and he founded CNN.
The rise of filming in recent years is due to an active campaign by the state to attract filming through various tax incentives and benefits. Also, once a filming industry has been established, it helps draw others when there is already a base of crew and equipment available to hire/rent without having to bring in from far away.
The state has one of if not the best tax credit laws / loopholes for filming industry. That means the filming industry businesses in Georgia are getting money from the government of Georgia.
Whether that’s a good or bad thing can be debated. But that is the simple answer.
Same has been true, off and on, in Rhode Island. Of course they weren’t smart enough here to make a nice big logo to show at the end of every product made here. Be nice to see if that changes with Hocus Pocus 2. Not that I’d want to be known for the 1st or 2nd film of that franchise. The politicians were actually dumb enough to think they could get rid of the tax breaks and expect Hollywood to literally trek across the country here.
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It has all to do with taxes. You spend X millions making a movie here we will give you Y in taxes based on how much you spend here. So it essentially helps to pad a budget. Just as an example: the budget is 40mil and Georgia gives you 10mil essentially making your budget now 50mil. It is all very, very silly.
The Georgia Film, Music and Digital Entertainment Office promotes filming in the state. They have been doing this since 1972. Add to that some tax laws that are favorable to the film and television industries and you have a state that no one expected passing California as the place to make movies and shows.
When a state really wants your business, they will make it desirable to work there. This is what Georgia did in order to attract the kinds of businesses they wanted. Now more stuff is filmed there instead of California.
It also helps that we have much better cameras that are able to work better in ambient light. The main reason California became the film capital of the US is because there is more Sunlight there. Seriously, that’s it. Because of the better Sunlight it was easier to film outdoors and that make it desirable. With better cameras, any place can become the place where studios prefer filming.
North Carolina in Wilmington on the coast had the same thing going with sound stages and production crews in the late 90’s/early 2000’s until the state legislature reduced the tax incentives due to “Hollywood values” and left a huge opening for Georgia to eat their lunch.
When Cable TV via Satellite was just getting started, Ted Turner lived in Atlanta and owned a TV Station and started the first 24 Hours News station CNN. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cnn-launches
I haven’t seen much talk of the union, yet. The various unions involved in film making are (mostly) geographically based. A Texas film can’t just hire a set decorator from Connecticut – they have to use the local union or jump through extra hoops to comply with bringing in an outside person.
Georgia has a lot to offer geographically. You can shoot urban, suburbs, mountains, beach, farmland… all without leaving the state. It makes it much easier to hire a crew.
Then, once the industry gets established, you get an influx of industry workers that move here and join the local union. I have friends they moved here from LA because there is more work and it’s much cheaper to live. So now there is a massive talent pool here, in and industry where jobs are probably 80% based on having worked with someone before.
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