From The Cutting Room Floor
The Night The (Gaffer’s) Lights went out in Georgia
Money in, money out. Georgia, like most states, spends a lot of effort to bring new money into the state. One way has been to offer tax incentives and rebates for projects, like movie and TV show productions, that will increase tourism, bring in crews and talent, and generally increase the money spent in the state, at least for a short time. Not only do film productions leave salaries and catering money behind, they spur new attractions for local folks to promote. Want to live the life of Tony Stark/Ironman? The Georgia lakeside house where he lived in Avengers: Endgame is available for rent through AirBnB—and only $800/night!
In 2008, Georgia instituted a 30 percent tax credit for productions shot in the state, leading to a gold rush level surge of filming there. Over 90,000 people work in the industry and in 2018, 455 productions took place in Georgia, according to figures from the state. Hits such as Avengers: Endgame, Stranger Things (Netflix), and The Walking Dead found a home in Georgia but recent productions that were scheduled there have been pulled, relocated, or put on hiatus awaiting the court cases spawned by the “Heartbeat bill.”
The editor has more in The Cutting Room and another point of view can be found here .
Films Fading Away
We tend to take for granted the storage media we use today, hard drives, SSD drives, camera cards and the like. Shoot and save, that’s the theme. Overshoot, just in case, since storage is sooooo cheap these days! Hey, TB is the common denominator, long overshadowing the “old” MB and GB monikers. PB (petaBytes) is being seen more today, especially in media asset management concepts. And the drive manufacturers are pushing product to extremes not imagined as little as a decade ago. Quality control is improving along with density but….
Lots more in The Cutting Room
Documentaries: Virtual or Real?
I come at filmmaking from the documentary tradition, specifically educational films. I worked with some of the best documentary film directors in that genre while working for Encyclopedia Britannica Films (EBF) in the late 1960s-early 1970s.
Because of that experience, I was looking forward to reading, and reviewing here, a new book titled: How to Film Truth. The author, Justin Wells, has a background in both film and theology so when he talks of “Truth” it has a slight religious flavor.
First, I do recommend the book to those thinking about doing documentary work or those just interested in what constitutes documentaries. It doesn’t get into the how, the what, or even the why so much as it looks at the philosophy behind the approaches to the genre.
Check it out in The Cutting Room