Region Earns Box-Office Appeal for Creative Arts
Published May 18, 2009
The movie may last just a couple hours to watch, but years after it wrapped production, The Guardian is still giving back to Shreveport.
Besides pumping more than $100 million into the local economy, the 2006 movie starring Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher as U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmers also resulted in construction of the Louisiana Wave Studio.
The 750,000-gallon pool is a magnet for moviemakers who come to the world’s only wave-generating pool dedicated to movie production.
The Wave Studio can churn out overhead sets that have left hardened stunt men unsteady. No word, though, if Jim Carrey got sick doing his own stunts for I Love You, Phillip Morris.
“It’s pretty unbelievable,” said Arlena Acree, Shreveport’s director of film, media and entertainment. “They can generate 8-foot waves at the touch of a button.”
Prior to August 2005, filmmakers made sporadic trips to the area, but hardly anything special, Acree says. But then Hurricane Katrina roared into the Gulf Coast, leaving producers, who had been lured to Louisiana by the state’s aggressive economic film incentives, looking for alternatives.
They found it in Shreveport. Since then, the area has emerged as a production mecca. In 2008, the city hosted 23 film and television projects, which created nearly 2,500 crew positions, resulted in 539 production days and filled 32,000 hotel bookings.
The beeline hasn’t gone unnoticed. In 2008, MovieMaker magazine dubbed Shreveport the third-best place to live, work and make movies.
It was that combination of creative scene and lifestyle that lured back Shreveport native Bill Joyce, a writer, illustrator and film maker whose works include Rolie Polie Olie, an animated series that airs on Disney Channel based on his collection of children’s books. Joyce also created conceptual characters for Pixar/Disney’s feature films Toy Story and A Bug’s Life.
The area’s diversity of landscapes has helped it double for the Bering Sea, Senegal, New York City and Amsterdam. Shreveport has even played itself a couple times, including in My Mom’s New Boyfriend, a 2008 movie starring Meg Ryan.
Movie productions, however, can come and go if all you offer is smiles and incentives. Shreveport, though, has developed infrastructure like the Wave Studio to keep the industry’s attention.
StageWorks of Louisiana, Mansfield Studios and Stage West are all established filming facilities, with the Robinson Film Center, the region’s only venue for independent, international and classic cinema, available for dailies.
Nu Image Inc./Millennium Films broke ground on a new studio on seven acres in April 2008, a project that is expected to grow to 20 acres. The project will include three soundstages, production offices, a mill and a prop house.
“It’s been really unbelievable how much has changed since 2005,” Acree says.
More Insight
The Robinson Film Center
www.robinsonfilmcenter.org
The Robinson Film Center is a nonprofit arts organization in Shreveport that operates a venue to showcase independent, international, and classic cinema and serves as resource for film production and media education.
The center includes multipurpose media rooms, two screens and the latest in film and digital projection equipment.
In addition to daily film programming, the center, which moved in to its new space in 2008, offers film and media production classes for all ages and provides a variety of resources and facilities to Northwest Louisiana’s film and television production industry.
Story by Sam Scott
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