The drive to pass a post-production tax credit bill in the California legislature received a boost Friday night when the California Post Alliance announced that the Television Academy has joined the fight.
News of the TV Academy’s decision was revealed at the California Post Alliance (CAPA) town hall that featured California Assemblyman Nick Schultz, who is championing the bill to create a targeted state tax incentive for post-production. The Television Academy confirmed its endorsement of the legislation in a statement to Variety.
“With over 20,000 of its members living across the state of California, the Television Academy endorses this legislation to keep post-production work here where so many of our members live,” a TV Academy spokesman said.
The CAPA meeting drew about 200 people to Evergreen Studios in Burbank.
“Their advocacy sends a powerful message that preserving jobs for California’s post-production community is essential to the future of television,” CAPA president Marielle Abaunza said of the TV Academy’s support.
Schultz, a Democrat who represents the Burbank area, introduced AB 2319, which would create a targeted tax incentive for post-production work even if the film or TV show was shot elsewhere. Schultz took center stage at Friday’s meeting, explaining the process and urging editors, musicians, visual-effects people and other post-production professionals to support the effort.
“My two next-door neighbors work in post-production,” Schultz told Variety before the meeting. “I have neighbors on my block that haven’t worked in more than a year. At a time when people are having a lot of trouble having any faith in their government, this is a bipartisan issue. This is about keeping people working and doing what they love.”
California has seen a loss of more than 4,400 jobs and $500 million in annual wages, which breaks down to $268 million in direct wages to post workers, $120 million in wages paid to supplier businesses, and another $119.5 million in wages supported by post-production worker spending, according to statistics presented at the meeting.
The bill has already been passed by the Assembly’s Arts, Entertainment, Sports & Tourism Committee and the Revenue & Taxation Committee. “Where we’re at now is, the bill is sitting in Appropriations,” Schultz said. “On Friday we’ll find out which bills survive and move to a full vote of the Assembly and which ones do not.
“I have rated this bill as my number-one priority this year. We’re accompanying the bill with a $100 million budget ‘ask’ to help launch the program. If it gets out of Appropriations next Friday, sometime over the course of the following three or four weeks we would take it for a full vote on the Assembly floor.
“I am cautiously optimistic that we would get bipartisan support based on some of the bipartisan votes that we had in the policy committees,” Schultz told Variety.
AB 2319 would provide a 35% to 50% tax incentive for post-production work done in California. The state’s current Film & Television Tax Credit program provides $750 million in incentives for films and TV produced in the state; the new bill, if passed, provides that rebate for post-production even if the filming takes place elsewhere.
CAPA treasurer Jennifer Freed added that the tax credit would be earned when a company spends at least 75% of its post-production budget in California (or $1 million, whichever is less). “Even if a project didn’t shoot here, let’s finish it here,” she said.
L.A. music people were especially hopeful about the bill as a major step towards returning some of the scoring work that has gone elsewhere (primarily London, Prague, Vienna and Bratislava) in recent years. “Anything related to scoring is eligible for the credit,” music contractor Peter Rotter said, “including musicians’ wages, studio recording costs, cartage, mixing and mastering, orchestration, music preparation and music supervision.
“The bill is really our last opportunity to bring back equality and competition with the rest of the world, and the rest of the U.S.,” Rotter said. “California still has the talent, the determination, the artistry and the extraordinary history that made this industry what it is today. But preserving that legacy cannot happen unless we all come together and show our representatives how important this bill truly is.”
Dennis Dreith, former president of the Recording Musicians Association and former administrator of the Film Musicians Secondary Markets Fund — both of which have joined the CAPA campaign — noted that AB 2319 is also “the first-ever California legislation to specifically incentivize music scoring in the state.
“Tax credits are not a new thing and have proven highly effective in luring work away from Hollywood,” he added. “The United Kingdom offers very substantial tax incentives for motion pictures not only to film in the U.K. but to score films there as well.” London scoring stages are constantly booked, unlike those in L.A. (including recording facilities at Fox, Sony and Warner Bros.) that are often empty.
During a Q&A after the general remarks, a number of visual-effects craftspeople expressed concern that the VFX portion of the bill focuses on post-production, whereas considerable VFX work (notably “pre-visualization” elements) begins during pre-production; they expressed hope that revisions to the language could help their situation. Schultz encouraged more dialogue on the topic as the process moved ahead.
“We have the best-trained people in the world,” Assemblyman Schultz said. “We have the human capital that you can’t just export or recreate elsewhere. We should have done this a decade ago. If this bill doesn’t make it this year, you all have my commitment — you can take it to the bank — that I will run this bill next year and every year until we get it done.”