Out of My Element
My stint in Georgia is coming to an end. And I am left with some thoughts.
I was brought here to work on a movie, the latest in a series of super hero films, a franchise that's a major cash cow for a select few and the producing studio / corporation. Georgia offers huge tax incentives to film productions. And after 15 days of shooting, it's obvious the only reason to have traveled people and resources to Georgia would be to save a buck.
There is not a single frame of film we exposed that could not have been captured in Los Angeles. The main set was a stretch of sandy beach here on Jekyll Island, a bridge span off the coast of Georgia. The talented greens people sunk a couple hundred palm trees into this beach, and then struggled to keep them looking like palm trees as winter temperatures dropped into the teens with wind chill. On the final days of filming, green spray paint was being administered liberally to the poor, withered fronds. We froze in abject misery more than a couple days on that lovely beach. The shooting conditions for this ten chracter, end of the movie scene ranged from brilliant sun to dark overcast, and rain caused huge scheduling changes. The toll on crew and cast moral from the freezing temps is hard to quantify.
The ultimate irony is that whatever costs were saved by the Georgia tax break had to have been eaten up by the gross mishandling of time and resources by production. But then they were trying to cope with a director whose casual working style and failure to lead in any manner was painful to witness. So, money was thrown at the problem in the form of crew and equipment.
Now being one of the beneficiaries of this approach, I have to be grateful and weary of biting the hand. I was not the only one however to shake my head over the waste, drag myself through each day's work, and mull the vision of these dollars going to fund numerous small, visionary, perhaps meaningful films. Like this director has done previously which led to this job.
The recession seems more evident here in Georgia than in Los Angeles. Industrial office space stands empty. The local mall was barely populated during the days leading up to Christmas. So, in that regard our being here and spending the dollars we are is a good thing. If we've propped up a region of the economy that has taken a major hit and relieved a bit of suffering, then we've done a good thing.
I was brought here to work on a movie, the latest in a series of super hero films, a franchise that's a major cash cow for a select few and the producing studio / corporation. Georgia offers huge tax incentives to film productions. And after 15 days of shooting, it's obvious the only reason to have traveled people and resources to Georgia would be to save a buck.
There is not a single frame of film we exposed that could not have been captured in Los Angeles. The main set was a stretch of sandy beach here on Jekyll Island, a bridge span off the coast of Georgia. The talented greens people sunk a couple hundred palm trees into this beach, and then struggled to keep them looking like palm trees as winter temperatures dropped into the teens with wind chill. On the final days of filming, green spray paint was being administered liberally to the poor, withered fronds. We froze in abject misery more than a couple days on that lovely beach. The shooting conditions for this ten chracter, end of the movie scene ranged from brilliant sun to dark overcast, and rain caused huge scheduling changes. The toll on crew and cast moral from the freezing temps is hard to quantify.
The ultimate irony is that whatever costs were saved by the Georgia tax break had to have been eaten up by the gross mishandling of time and resources by production. But then they were trying to cope with a director whose casual working style and failure to lead in any manner was painful to witness. So, money was thrown at the problem in the form of crew and equipment.
Now being one of the beneficiaries of this approach, I have to be grateful and weary of biting the hand. I was not the only one however to shake my head over the waste, drag myself through each day's work, and mull the vision of these dollars going to fund numerous small, visionary, perhaps meaningful films. Like this director has done previously which led to this job.
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| Christmas at the mall. Brunswick, GA 2010 |
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