Change in Michigan Industry. No Change with Michigan Film Incentives.

My Michigan filmmaker friends at Deep Blue Pictures produced the above video. It's part of the new campaign: High Five for Film Incentives!

This campaign is necessary to share the positive impact and change that Michigan’s Film Incentives have created in this state. If you want keep this positive change in Michigan and allow it to develop, then please share your comments and stories on the High Five for Film Incentives website. More importantly, if you support the incentives, voice your concern to your state representatives.

The recent report from the Senate Fiscal Agency issued in September 2010 by economist David Zin drew the conclusion that the film incentives are not working, or not working enough.

Jim Burnstein recently defended the state’s film incentives against the issued report in his testimony to the Senate finance committee last Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010. Burnstein is a UofM film professor, Screenwriter and Vice Chairman of the Michigan Film Office Advisory Council. He’s been studying film tax incentives for several years following the states that have succeeded and the states that have failed from initiating incentives. He also played a major role in the passage of Michigan's incentives.

One of the key points Jim made during his testimony, which was highly attended, myself included, was that…

The purpose of the legislation was to make the people rich, not the government itself rich.

If you make any change to the film incentive bill, the state and the many Michigander’s who have invested into this industry will lose everything they started.

Leave the film incentives alone. Period.

He strongly advised that the state must wait at least 5 years before you can accurately assess the economic impact of the film incentives. Not to mention the report by Zin doesn’t account for the “overall value” the film incentives are making.

Burnstein describe this overall value with a few examples of positive change:

1. Image. The Senate Fiscal report doesn’t account for the positive change in Michigan’s image as a result of the free positive press and publicity that the state is receiving all over the world generated from the film incentives. This also benefits tourism, one of Michigan’s few industries. And you can’t put a price tag on the ability to revamp Detroit’s image, which has often been the laughing stock in world press for years. Take this video for example with nearly 3 million views.  I bet Cleveland will soon wish it was Detroit.

2. Reverse Change in Brain Drain. Burnstein cited an impressive list of innovators and CEOs who we’re educated in Michigan’s publicly funded institutions, only to leave the state after graduation and make their millions elsewhere. What kind of investment is that? Since the film incentives passed in 2008, Burnstein witnessed several of his students, myself included, stay in Michigan to seek opportunities with the film incentives.

Unfortunately, it seems Burnstein’s testimony may not have gotten through to Sen. Nancy Cassis, R-Novi, the Senate Finance Committee chair. I realized that a Senate Finance Committee hearing doesn’t necessarily mean they are listening. I was disgusted at how distracted Sen. Cassis was during Burnstein’s testimony. While Burnstein defended the film incentives, and described why the Senate’s report is misleading, Sen. Cassis turned her back to order lunch. Listening to the people is a part of the job responsibility for a state representative. Sen. Cassis’ poor listening skills surprised me. She rarely made eye contact throughout Burnstein’s testimony and it seemed the majority of her time was spent overlooking her prepared statement that she would close the hearing with.

Those in attendance at the hearing may have found Sen. Cassis closing statement to be contradictory. After Burnstein cited several of the ripple effects of the film industry and how it affects several industries (construction, hospitality, transportation, security, and more), Sen. Cassis said that the film industry in Michigan is a “boutique” industry that only affects a privileged few. She said the film incentives play favorites, what if we passed incentives to support graphic design instead? I don’t think Sen. Cassis knows that graphic designers may be hired in the art department on film sets.

She also said that supporters of the film incentives are unrealistically hopeful and they only provide anecdotes of support and not facts. She provided her own anecdote saying that when she was young, she had a once in a lifetime opportunity to intern in Washington D.C. Instead of taking that opportunity, she said she married and move to Michigan to work in the auto industry. She tried to express optimism that you can give up on dreams and still find opportunities. This seemed to be the advice she gave to all of the young people in the room.

The problem with her position now is that the auto industry is no longer an opportunity. It is dead- well, in some respect I think so. Although working in film is a dream that is being realized by many people in the state of Michigan, young and old, it is also one of the few positive state movements towards diversifying it’s economy and moving away from an auto only economy.

LOOK: I’m not a politician, I’m not an economist, I’m not a scientist, and I’m not an expert on anything. But I too, like Sen. Cassis am interested in “facts.” But the facts I’m interested are not facts of numbers or facts of budgets, I’m in interested in FACTS OF CHANGE.

Change is a necessity for survival. Fact. It’s Darwinism and survival of the fittest. Your surrounding environment is always changing and you must adapt to survive.

When I look at Michigan, I see a state that was innovative more than a hundred years ago to build the largest auto industry. Then I see a state that threw away nearly all it’s economic diversity to capitalize on this auto industry. It worked great for a long time and it seems that a lot of people expected great wages forever. When I see the auto industry, I see lack of foresight. To think that you could produce the same car forever, a car that runs on fuel created from extinct dinosaurs and other matter, it is unrealistic to think that economy may be sustainable (But, they're slowly changing). It’s the same with real estate. There’s a limited amount of land and you cannot keep building and selling houses forever- at least in the same capacity it was going...

I’m sorry for those who are unemployed and suffer from this economy… but I’ll restate a fact of change, a fact of life: It’s survival of the fittest and you must adapt. The environment, the economy, the people around you, etc will always be changing whether you notice it or not. You must change too if you want any chance of survival.

The Michigan Film Incentives seem to be the state’s only attempt towards positive change and adapting its economy. Or at least it's the largest attempt that is positively affecting several industries (hotel/hospitality, restaurants, tourism, construction, and more...)  I’m certainly open to other solutions but right now, no other politicians, including Sen. Cassis, can offer an alternative in which Michigan can adapt. Instead, they suggest changing the film incentives, one of the state's few good implements. 

Please voice your concern to your state representatives, along with Sen. Cassis, and soon the new change of governor Rick Snyder.

To read Jim Burnstein’s testimony find the .PDF at the bottom right side of the screen on the Michigan Film Office's website.

Also, here’s a recent article in the Free Press of Burnstein’s testimony.