#filmincentive

Dear Governor Dayton, House Speaker Daudt, Senate Majority Leader Bakk, and Conference Committee Co-Chairs and Members:

Please vote to fully fund Snowbate.

I’ve gone over this a hundred or so times by now so I’m fairly certain that this analogy is irrefutable: politicians and filmmakers have the same spirit animal.

Most of us answer a calling to perform the work that we do and, if we’re lucky, our countless hours of hard work are rewarded with even more hours of even harder work.

We routinely reflect on our life experiences and measure success by the degrees to which our message (aka story) resonates with others.

We have that Kafkaesque life force known as “fundraising” in common that doubles as the bane of our existence.

Campaigning in advance of Election Day is a march just as pitching a feature film to the studios is a march. Maintaining the favor of your constituents after you’ve won the election is a march just like performing well at the box office is one as well.

If you’ve seen ‘March of the Penguins’ (imdb.com/title/tt0428803) then you catch my drift.

The anecdotes you share on the trail (or in brilliant demonstrations of rhetoric in the midst of budget deliberations) comprise your stature in the eyes of your constituents and colleagues. The filmmaker’s stories serve up the same result. To run for a public office is to sacrifice your privacy and to embrace a new normal where you are in a constant state of vulnerability. This is true for filmmakers, too. Perhaps you, a Minnesota lawmaker, and I, a Minnesota filmmaker, are crazy to have such undying faith in the collaborative processes of democracy and movie-making because of their enduring yet torrid affairs with conflict but engagement with dissenting voices (the other side of the aisle for you and the antagonist for me) is where the magic happens.

Conflict holds our interest and challenges us to deliver our very best work but it becomes unproductive or damaging if not tempered by its opposite. Roger Ebert, a man who made a career out of being in constant conflict with Gene Siskel, delivered expert testimony regarding the value of its antidote in July of 2005:

We all are born with a certain package. We are who we are: where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We're kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people. And for me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.

No two people see anything exactly alike and this will always be relevant at all scales of measure and enumeration. This secures our need for government and its many moments of mediation and if film-making could be granted the same value in terms of capital and operation, I posit that having the voice of Minnesota filmmakers at the table will prove paramount to our state’s status in the global economy. Media is powerful and there’s an art to influence that we should be fighting like “H – E – double hockey sticks” to have so that the world knows what we already know to be true: Minnesota isn’t a fly-over state, it’s a destination where stories are set and filmed and to which tourists flock (year-round, and even to the rural locations).

Film and television production is a business just like any other and its direct investment moves akin to water, via gravity, unless pumped and diverted to locations in need. A state’s shot at landing any given film or television production BEGINS AND ENDS with the list of states offering competitive tax incentives. The days when natural resources determined an industry’s lasting ties to a geographic place are over. In today’s economy, the birth name of 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) would be C2M and it would be in China. If we hadn’t already coined the term “Snowbate”, in today’s film incentive climate, it would likely belong to Canada. Without your vote in support of fully funding Snowbate, Minnesota’s film and television industry WILL DRY UP. Either en masse or a constant trickle, my fellow crew community members and I will have no choice but to march against our grain and against the elements to find work in other states and countries where state and national governments understand that film-making incentives yield hefty returns. Minnesota will feel the loss if we have to leave, I promise you.

Please vote to fund Snowbate. You know as well as I do that this march is tough enough without the added obstacles and that, when presented with a better offer, this march may never return. Let’s invest in ourselves and in our ability to control our own message. Empathy can’t be exercised in a vacuum and with films ranging from ‘Purple Rain’ to ‘Grumpy Old Men’ to ‘Fargo’ on our state’s resume, aren’t you curious to see what’s next?

Most sincerely,

Stefanie Toftey

p.s. Speaking of the power of movies to evoke empathy to triumph over conflict, 20 years ago in a miraculous moment of harmony, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were in accord about the best film of 1996 and Minnesota should be proud!

cc:

Representative Phyllis Kahn (DFL) District: 60B

Senator Kari Dziedzic (DFL) District 60 (via email form)

U.S. House Representative Keith Ellison (DFL) District 5 (via Twitter)

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (DFL) (via Twitter)

A message from the Colorado Office of Film Television and Media.

The film commissioner offered high praise for the Colorado Film and Video Association and its efforts to help get the incentive doubled by the legislature. “I think the CFVA was really instrumental last year in getting this bill passed,” he said. “Every time we stumbled or hit a little roadblock, the members came out and sent the message to the legislature that we really needed this. The legislature listens to the citizens, and these are the working citizens.”

That support needs to continue, CFVA board members conclude. CFVA members are urged to let their state representatives and senators know that the incentive is working, is generating significant economic activity in Colorado, is creating permanent jobs in the state, and helps show off our beautiful environs to the rest of the world, making incentivized films and television shows indispensable tourism promotion tools.

Video Special Thanks:

Colorado Film Office of Film Television & Media

Rocky Mountain PBS

High Noon Entertainment

Richard J. Schneider, Author

James Drake, Colorado Cinematographer http://www.jdfnet.com

Henry Darrow McComas, Colorado Video Producer 

5K Insight, Red Epic Rentals http://www.5kinsight.com

Crooked Lake Productions, Colorado Video Production, http://www.crookedlp.com

Kevin Kerndt, Motion Graphics, http://www.kerndtdesign.com/