Earl Hilliard, Jr. Interview, Jan. 4, 2006, Part 2

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : Producer, director, actor of "Under The Influence" , "Camp D.O.A." and I've assistant producer on projects for Magic City, there's been several projects.

Reelscene : And what do you see as a film incentive for the State of Alabama?

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : When it comes to film incentives I like what were trying to do already. Some of the things are very good. Some tax stuff, tax rebates, that's ok. Hotel, waiving hotel taxes, that's ok. But that's fine for bringing other companies in and giving them incentives to come here and shoot. You have to do that kind of stuff to stay competitive which are Georgia's and Mississippi's. But one of the things I would like to try to add to the package is, I'm trying to find creative and new ways to help independent filmmakers that are in Birmingham, that are in Alabama, things that would help them to actually do things. I'm not exactly certain what all those things are, I've heard a lot of suggestions on what we could do to increase that. That's why I'm talking to Mark Stricklin who's over the new Birmingham Film Office [sic]. I want to talk to him more about some of the things we can do locally. Because what I want to do is, I believe before we become really attractive to people from outside the State [Alabama] to really shoot here, we've got to increase and build our infrastructure here. Because when they come here, they can't even find all the crew they need. They can't find the crew they need, they can't find the talent they need because we don't have skilled people in those various positions they need. So what I think we need to do is we need to make sure that the filmmakers that are here have the support they need to do their projects, then they'll do more projects and more projects.

Then we need to find a system where we can train and teach those people who want to be a part of the film industry but just don't know how. And when I say train and teach them we need to have schools to teach you how to be a grip, how to be a boom mic operator, how to be an audio engineer, how to do field audio. What does cinematographer do? What's the difference between a cinematographer and a DP [director of photography]. A guy asked the question today, ' what's the difference between a producer and a director '. You've got to have places on the ground here that train and teach people how to do that because if we rely on people where you can just go to film school, there's no film schools in Alabama because they're leaving. And if they leave, they're going to stay probably. They're going to stay wherever they are. Some people return but most people they get somewhere and there's so many opportunities here I'll stay. So we need to create that and build the infrastructure here. So I want to incentives that help people do that.

Reelscene : So that's more to support the local industry rather than trying to attract outside business.

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : That's where I think it should start. Now don't get me wrong by no stretch of the imagination am I saying not to try to attract people. But if you look at the larger productions that come here, and you see the difficulties they have, then you see that we have to increase here because you have people come here [Alabama] and they get their rental cars from Atlanta [Georgia]. They get all of their craft services from out of town.

Reelscene : The catering [translation for readers not familiar with the industry term]

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : They get everything that they need from other places. I'm trying to think of what project it was that came here. They brought their rental trucks from Atlanta, they went back every night to Atlanta and stayed there for lodging. And they got their cell phones from Atlanta. And they got most of their talent from LA [Los Angeles]. They brought their crew in from LA and they grabbed a few grips here or a few PAs [production assistants]. That's the problem.

Reelscene : Probably "Big Fish".

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : (laughs) It could have been, I'm not really sure which one it was. But what I'm saying is, so you hear about all these great things, 'oh this film's shot here' but then you really look at it and they had 250 people on payroll [production staff, not including day extras] and 14 of those were from Alabama.

Reelscene : Small percentage for the amount of money it generated.

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : Exactly, And you say for the amount of they spent you go 'oh well they spent 50 million dollars' and then you go 'ok but where did they spend that money'. You found that they did post-production which is usually, sometimes more expensive than production, it can be, and you found that they did that in LA. Then they did their pre-production when they were in LA before they got here. You look at 'ok, where did they get their talent from', all their talent [from LA] except for some extras, and they probably got unpaid extras when they were here, so you look and they really hadn't spent much money here. So yeah, they shot here. So we've got to set up so they can come here and spend their money. We don't have some things like a film processing lab. We've just got places now where you can time your projects and stuff like that. So you can get some more work done here but it's hard for them to spend money here a lot of times.

Reelscene : On the legislation, tax incentives, there's been some controversy about the tax breaks being too much and not getting enough return back to the state so would there be something where Alabama residents can have a preference or have some coupling so they hire actual more local people to get the tax breaks.

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : Yeah, well a lot of places already do that. A lot of places say to get these incentives, I think it's Canada and some of the other places, that say stuff like you have to hire 70% of your crew from here to qualify for the tax incentives, or over 50% of the budget has to be spent here. You can easily do that. You can require a certain amount of the budget to be spent here if that's what's necessary. Now before I make a blanket statement on that kind of thing I think you have to evaluate the whole circle. Because what I ask people is, let's say you get 100% of all the film stuff that's in Alabama and it equals zero dollars, or you give up some taxes on 100 million dollars, so you don't get everything you could have gotten, but you've got them shooting here now. There's a difference. I've heard people say things like, you talked about, where we're giving away too much. Well if they weren't going to shoot here anyway, but the incentives actually got them here then you're not losing. You're not getting as much as you could have possibly maxed out, but you're not losing. Because if a company has a hundred million dollars to shoot a movie and they're debating between shooting that movie in Alabama or Georgia, they're not coming here draining the money from you, they're coming here spending the money here. So my thing is are you better off if Georgia gets a hundred million dollar film than us not getting it, but hey you didn't have to give any tax incentives. That's the question I'd ask those people, are you better off with Georgia getting a hundred million dollar film than Alabama getting it but you don't have to pay taxes incentives, or you don't get tax incentives. I think that when you really put it like that you're not losing money. I think that a lot of times people [say] 'we should get all of it' . Well in a perfect world you want to get all of it but when it really comes down to it, if your choice, if geographically there's nothing that makes them shoot the movie here you've got to be competitive with the other States, if you really want a film industry. But my thing is, how does it put you in a better situation, how does it put you in a better situation if they're not shooting here. So you've got 100% of nothing. That's what I think.