Better and Better

There are three general areas competing for us as the shooting location: Texas (Houston mainly), Louisiana (Shreveport), and Michigan (Oscoda - home of the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base).

Each have merits.

Houston: is home for the company and principals. Shooting here would be VERY easy and would allow most of us to sleep in our own beds every night. However, we still would have chores to do. :D Houston is a great place to shoot. Good crews (many of whom I know and have used), superb locations and a helpful Film Commission. The problem in Texas is that the current Film Incentives are only about 5%. We lobbied in Austin for the new regs but that won't get decided for another month or so.

Shreveport: has amazing facilities and some really helpful people. Everyone I talk to says crews are EAGER and helpful. PLUS - Louisiana has a 25-35% tax credit Film Incentive. That means that after all brokerage fees and so on - we get about 20% of our non-actor budget BACK in a check about 6 weeks after we finish shooting. Hard to ignore.

Oscoda, Michigan: This little community has a great location but no crews. We'd have to put everyone up for the entire time and move to Detroit for interiors. The 40% Film Incentive on non-actor expenses SHOULD net us about a 30% check back for our expenses - but, we hear that it is very difficult to comply with their regs and you can't fix it if you didn't do it right to begin with. That old air base will have to be a SUPERB location to compete with Texas and Louisiana.

Tomorrow, Susan and I will be putting together the offering paperwork. Our financial team is already beating the bushes and we expect financial action and commencement of Development very soon.

More later - Steve