More on Savage County and filming in Memphis
In addition to our previous post here, with info and links on Thursday's "Savage County" premiere, we have another link here.
Meanwhile, the Daily News has a story that interviews "Savage County" director Davis Harris who has great things to say about filming in Memphis:
“When I’m working with people here it’s important that everyone be a filmmaker,” said Harris. “Just knowing those people and having those relationships makes it very attractive to work with people who understand holistically how a film is going to come together and what it takes to get it done when you don’t have a lot of resources.”
In fact, he described Memphis as a “karass,” a Kurt Vonnegut term for a place where people come together perfectly.
Also in the story, Linn Sitler is quoted about the situation with incentives in Tennessee:
“The people that were here for the film ‘Losers Take All,’ the independent feature that just wrapped about the fictional punk Memphis music band, this was Mike Ryan’s third project here,” said Sitler, film commissioner for the Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission.
“Mike will do anything to bring a project to Memphis. One of our favorite producers, Michael Hausman, produced four films here and he would have produced four more at least except we didn’t stay competitive on a state level with film incentives.”
Sitler noted that in the last few years Memphis has lost out on major film and TV projects, including the movie “The Blind Side” and the TV series “Memphis Beat,” to Georgia and Louisiana, respectively, because Tennessee’s film incentives are not as liberal as other states’.
“Where we fall down is that with Georgia’s refund, you can get a whole lot more money back because they count out-of-state expenses like Sandra Bullock’s salary toward the refund,” said Sitler.
