Comments on: Decatur Takes Advantage of Georgia’s “Booming” Film Industry

By: Should the GA Tax Incentive Have a Local Hire Provision? « Real Film Career Forum for What I Really Want to Do

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 04:27:50 +0000

[...] to my main point, Decatur Metro commented on one of the AJC‘s recent pieces, highlighting the portions about Decatur’s speedy, [...]

By: DarenW

DarenW — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:21:59 +0000

It would take nothing less than the Coen brothers to make a good movie in Snellville.

By: DEM

DEM — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:17:09 +0000

No, not necessarily a drop on the credit rating. Investors may lose confidence well before the ratings agencies drop the official rating, which is next to meaningless anyway. Moody’s is the same outfit that in 2008 was rating mortgage-backed securities as triple A. So many investors really don’t care what the rating is anyway.

One of your links did not work, but note that interest on existing debt is not nearly the entire story because it doesn’t account for the fact that we are borrowing to finance current operations at a substantial rate. Thus, interest payments are going to go up over time, as we are incurring over a trillion in new debt every year. The bond market does not care what total interest obligations were in 2007, before TARP, the stimulus, quantitative easing, etc. That’s old information that does not matter when you are buying a 5, 10, or 30 year T-bill today. And the latest news — that we’re going to add another $900 billion onto the debt pile through this tax deal — certainly isn’t changing our creditworthiness for the better.

I can’t tell you when and if things will turn. The bond market is not predictable like that. Confidence can evaporate overnight; one day you can sell T-bills, the next day you can’t (or can sell them only by offering huge interest rates).

By: Decatur Metro

Decatur Metro — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 15:38:52 +0000

I bet the Coen Brothers could shoot a darn good film in Snellville.

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 15:30:32 +0000

The net positive or net negative nature of filming depends on where you draw the line. Let’s say the findings you refer to are accurate and that they’re transferable to Georgia’s situation. That is, let’s say the state program doesn’t come close to recouping what it gives away. That still leaves the issue of where filming actually takes place and the impact on those specific spots.

I know people like to think in a nice “we’re all in this together” Kumbaya kind of way but the truth is that community building is a competition with every other community. Every bit of investment a municipality gets is at the expense of other communities where it didn’t go. So, communities (at the micro level) can still win (in terms of capturing sales tax bumps, temporary employment, etc. associated with filming) if they’re attractive to filmmakers (as Decatur appears to be).

That requires having the easy process filmmakers want, but it also requires having a community that looks good on film, with lots of diverse, shootable locations. It’s not like you see things getting shot in Snellville (for example) with the same regularity as Decatur (or at all).

Which is all to say that Decatur has a competitive advantage and we can continue to benefit locally, even if the impact on the state is a negative. That may not make it wise in the big picture but we as a city need to play the hand we’re dealt. The state sets the context; it’s up to us to either take advantage of it or not.