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In 2006, New York City hosted a record 34,718 shooting days, including 276 movies. The city’s intangible cool factor has not been what has been luring producers. Nor has it been the huge talent pool, although more than a third of the actors in this country live in New York City, according to a recent report by Cornell University and the Fiscal Policy Institute. The reason is the tax break.
The city’s $5 billion-a-year industry, which had already been declining from a high-point in 1998, took a considerable hit after 9/11. The year 2002 saw the fewest shooting days in a decade. To buoy the sinking industry, the city’s “Made in N.Y.” program provided a tax break worth 15 percent of the movie’s production costs to filmmakers shooting at least 75 percent of their film in the city.
The tax break has proven so appealing that producers started filming movies in the outer boroughs that are not scripted to take place in New York at all. Brooklyn substituted for much of Boston in Martin Scorcese’s “The Departed,” and though “Little Children” is supposed to take place in suburban Massachusetts, all the filming was done on Staten Island.
The city’s production industry now employs 100,000 New Yorkers, and supports 4,000 production support businesses, like companies that provide theater space, lighting or crafts services. “I Am Legend,” which holds the title of largest movie shoot ever to happen in the city, employed 2,600 New Yorkers as production employees, extras and stand-ins.
Many production assistants – a job which requires no specialized skill set – are young and looking to break into the industry. But not all the interns are assistant-directors-to-be. Some are in it solely for the paycheck. James Hundley and Lloyd Francis, from Bedford-Stuyvesant and Canarsie, respectively, were in charge of parking for “The Visitor.” Every time a truck rolled up, one of them scurried to remove the orange cones and direct the driver.
“They’ll take anybody,” says Hundley. So as long as you’re in the loop, whenever a movie comes to town “you know you’re going to get work.” The city’s brand new “Made in New York” Production Assistant Training Program trained 47 production assistants-to-be in 2006, 98 percent of them “people of color,” according to a press release from the Mayor’s Office of Film.
From first-day interns to veteran union guys with headsets, every production assistant agrees that the hours are long and the pay sucks. Hundley and Francis make $125 a day, for a 12-hour shift.
“It’s not much at all,” says Hundley. “I’m ashamed to say what I make.”
Hundley says he works approximately half the days in a year. “Maybe a movie comes every three months, and commercials in between.”
In the past couple months he’s worked on the set of “American Gangster,” “The Black Donnellys,” and a TV show that will be airing on NBC.
When he is not working, Hundley says with a snort, “I sit home and collect unemployment.”
At the moment though, there’s plenty of work.
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