Capitol Ideas — Filmmaking in Iowa: Not the tax incentives, but the light

CEDAR RAPIDS - Forget the chase. Forget trying to land the big one.

Now it's about growing your own. About sustainability.

That's the way Liz Gilman, executive director of Produce Iowa, describes the state's changing role in attracting movie productions - and media of all sorts - to the state.

'The industry has changed,” she says about what's generally referred to as 'Hollywood.”

With the popularity of animated and CGI movies, 'it doesn't depend on where they're shot,” Gilman says.

She helped relaunch Iowa's efforts to attract media production - films, television shows, web series, apps, commercials, animation shorts and more - when the film office was moved from the state economic development office to the Department of Cultural Affairs.

'So we want to create sustainability among ourselves,” Gilman says. That means growing media production from the grass roots, 'up from the Iowans who are here.”

'We need to save ourselves, so to speak,” she says. 'We need to grow our industry and create jobs and celebrate what we have here.”

That new attitude stems, at least in part, from the fiasco the film office became when the poorly managed program unraveled in 2009, taking down a number of filmmakers and state officials with it.

Iowa once hoped to be the darling of the industry with best-in-the-nation state tax credits. Now it offers none, and Gilman doubts tax credits will be on the menu any time soon.

Iowa is not alone in scaling back incentives aimed at luring Hollywood away from Hollywood. Thirty-nine states have a film tax-credit program, but at least a couple of them have been suspended or are not currently funded.

The Minnesota Legislature is considering eliminating its film incentives all together. In Massachusetts, where generous incentives to film production companies have been the bane of similar efforts in neighboring states, the governor has proposed eliminating the tax credits to provide a tax credit for low-income working people.

All the more reason for Iowa to grab its bootstraps and lift its media production industry, Gilman says.

She's focusing on attracting independent filmmakers who find it 'easy” to film in Iowa.

'There are people who love Iowa,” she says. 'They like the people. They know it's easier to shoot here.

'We don't require all these permits and layers. People find Iowa refreshing.”

And then there is the light.

When Kevin Kostner was back last summer for the 'Field of Dreams” reunion at Dyersville, Gilman asked him why someone should film in Iowa.

'The first thing he said was, ‘The light,'” Gilman says. 'No one else can compete with your natural light here,” she says Kostner told her.

'So it comes down to what we have to offer - beautiful landscape and a beautiful light for the filmmakers.”

For some, that's enough.

Gilman spends time at Iowa film festival to meet with filmmakers who come here from all over the world.

At the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival recently, she met French filmmakers were so taken with that area they want to film part of their next project there. They stayed an extra day to scout locations.

'You never know what's going to hit on someone that they really take a liking to,” Gilman says. 'I can't wait for them to write in Iowa as a character in their next film.”