New Mexico is forever being mistaken for a whole 'nother country, but film industry knows who were are – and they like us. A lot.
New Mexico Business Weekly reported today on the recent report from Variety magazine – the entertainment news publicatoin. It seems that Variety conducted an online poll among a whole range of people involved in making films to rate their favorite locations on visual appeal, incentives, film-office support, production resources and ability to substitute for another location.
Iain Blair (Variety) reports in Pros pick best places for filmmaking that California and New York took the number one and two spots. But, right behind them was (sound of trumpets, please) New Mexico – Albuquerque, other cities and our "remote areas" took the #3 spot.
Among the reasons cited for our major-league popularity was the film incentive program. If critics wonder if it works – it seems to be quite a lure. Blair notes: This aggressive incentive has spurred a heavy production slate, promoting growth in studio and stage space. This year alone has seen 15 major feature film productions as well as various TV series.
They also like our outlying areas, and our crew base – the largest outside of the east and west coasts.
Besides the obvious economic advantages of being a film-capital in the making, this also means the fun of tracking down and visiting movie locations.
Move tours anyone?
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(c) Neala Schwartzberg - all rights reserved
Comments
I'm glad you saw this. I saw it and thought, "I should share this with Neala," and then... look a butterfly! I'm so easily distra
;-)
I would think this will only make more people in the biz consider NM as a filming location. Congrats to your fair state!
Tweeted this the other night. The state gets a lot of money from the film industry and it's fun to occasionally see famous faces in the street here. They offer training courses on a lot of aspects of film-production so that they can use local crews and they pay well, but it is long, hard, unglamorous work.
Glad we got that designation and Santa Fe is the #3 favorite city in the US according to readers of Travel and Leisure. Our small state is cookin'.
I clicked on the link to the Variety article and was pleased to see Michigan as having the top movie incentive tax offering. Can't help mentioning that I wrote about Michigan's movie biz on Detroit Landmarks Examiner.
We're getting used to having streets blocked off, things blowing up, and things like military tanks all set up for a scene. Fun!
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