Written by on Nov 18, 2014. Posted in On Location

Georgia reaffirms commitment to film crew training but needs experience boost

Georgia has reaffirmed its commitment to developing its crew pool but in the short-term will need to find a way to supply experienced crew for multiple large-scale shoots. The state has hosted both the Hunger Games and Insurgent franchises and is also home to The Walking Dead.

Plans were discussed in Georgia last week for several different production training courses, CovNews reports, but these will be multi-year programmes and so are effectively long-term solutions to the problem.

Before that, Georgia may need to find new ways to encourage experienced crew to relocate to the state. Mandi Dillin, a Location Manager on Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, recently told The Location Guide that more of her colleagues are choosing to move from California to Georgia, as the mid-western state offers more regular work on large-scale shoots.

Marvel has been filming Ant-Man in Atlanta over the last few months and has had to bring in some of its crew from California, but the studio has announced it will be returning next year for Captain America: Civil War. The movie is likely to be just one of several large-scale features that will test the state’s crewing resources.

Georgia’s generous filming tax credit is worth up to 30% of qualifying local expenditure and has been crucial to the growth of the regional production industry. Nearly 160 films and TV shows filmed in Georgia in the 2013/14 fiscal year and spent over USD 5 billion, according to the Georgia Department of Economic Development.

The US production landscape is likely to change from next year when California boosts its filming incentive programme. Authorities have agreed to more than triple the annual film fund and expand tax credit support to big-budget features and high-end TV dramas.