Panel Asks N.Y. to Provide New Studios : The industry: The study also recommends other financial incentives to better compete against Los Angeles and other filmmaking areas.
NEW YORK — The city should build new studio facilities, particularly in Manhattan, and create new financial incentives to lure filmmakers, a comprehensive study by the administration of Mayor David N. Dinkins recommended Thursday.
Although motion picture and television production already contribute about $3 billion a year to New York’s economy, the report said, the steps are needed for the city to challenge California and other competitors.
The report recommends creating financial incentives for producers who do most of their filming in New York. It urges setting aside permanent office space for filmmakers and calls for measures to take advantage of the growth in multimedia entertainment.
At the same time, the study by the New York City Economic Policy and Marketing Group noted that after years of serious slide in the city’s market share, there are indications that filmmaking here is on the rise.
Between 1982 and 1992, the number of jobs in motion picture and television production increased by 44,000 in the United States. But in New York, film and television employment dropped by 1,700. As a result, the city’s share of industry employment fell from 17.6% to 9.7%, the report said.
“There are encouraging signs that the film and television production industry in New York City is recovering strength,†the study said. “In the first 10 months of 1993, the number of permits issued by the film office for feature film production rose 30% compared to the year before. . . . An increasing percentage of recent permits issued for feature films are for productions of the eight biggest studios in Hollywood.â€
In 1994, two major sequels--â€Batman III†and Die Hard IIIâ€--have scheduled significant filming in New York, said Richard Brick, head of the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting, who commissioned the economic study.
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The report, which compares New York to the rest of the nation and to Canada, concludes that New York falls far behind California in motion picture and television production. It said that the motion picture and television industries employed 118,500 workers nationally in 1992 and that California accounted for almost 67% of the total.
No other regional production center accounts for more than 3%, the study added.
The study found that New York has a shortage of large television studio space. It urged the city’s film office to see if some properties in Manhattan could easily be converted to studio use and recommended creation of a privately run production office center in Manhattan, offering low-cost office space to producers working on projects in the city.
The study called for providing financing to film and television producers who commit to a large percentage of their total work on a project in New York City.
There are precedents for such an approach. Florida is raising money for a Film and Television Investment Fund. If at least 40% of a project’s production is spent in the state, the fund will invest or loan money for advertising and marketing, up to a maximum of $3 million.
“New York City’s main competition--California, on the one hand, and the other U.S. and Canadian eastern states and provinces on the other--pose different sets of challenges,†the report said.
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“Los Angeles and New York City are more similar than any other production centers: Both have been major production centers for years. They are the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. They have big artist populations and numerous cultural establishments. Both are sites of prestigious educational institutions that serve the industry,†the study continued.
“In many production projects, particularly in feature film production, Los Angeles and New York compete on talent and quality of resources rather than cost,†it added.
The report said that New York faces perceptions, which municipal officials are trying to correct, that it is a high-cost location and difficult environment in which to work. The study said that new arrangements have been made with a coalition of local unions and that a number of new initiatives to ease production difficulties have been launched by the mayor’s film office.
But it acknowledged that non-union states and areas where unions have standardized agreements for low-budget productions still have advantages over New York.
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