Goodbye D.C., hello Iowa

While skimming my RSS feed earlier this week, an article from the Washington Post caught my eye. It read, "Filming movies in Washington just got harder". While its pretty common knowledge that filming on location is always more financially and legally challenging than filming on a studio set, often times art directors still feel there is just no substitute for such a powerful location as our nation's capitol.

One of the first problems facing a filmmaker wanting to shoot on location in D.C. is financing; not many places are as film friendly as California. For instance, D.C. offers little to no incentives programs for filmmakers, while other cities and states offer competitive packages.

Many productions get around these snafus by only filming establishing shots on-location and filming interiors and even exteriors at either cheaper locations or on sets. For example, the TV show NCIS, a show set in D.C., is filmed mostly in Santa Clarita, Calif. Likewise, Legally Blonde: Red, White & Blonde was filmed mainly in California studios or on-location in Illinois and Utah which both offer better filming incentives and less security hassles than D.C.

D.C. isn't the only culprit of unfriendly film stipulations though. While Austin is one of the more film-friendly cities, the state of Texas and its many larger cities offer very low financial incentives as well.

So while lack of filming incentives isn't a new problem to the filming industry, a fairly large hurdle may have just arisen. To the dismay of the filming industry, a particular patch of land with the perfect shot of the Capitol building, just traded hands from the U.S. Park Service to the Capitol Police.

Still shot from Transformers 3, courtesy of the Washington Post.

Why is this so bad, you ask? Because the Capitol Police department is notorious for not being as film-friendly as the U.S. Park Service. And while there hasn't been any concrete say in the matter yet, according to Peggy Pridemore, a D.C. location manager, "the answer from the Capitol is always absolutely no".

This unfortunately can cost the city millions of dollars in revenue because according to the article, a feature-film crew can spend almost $500,000 a day while on-location. For example, last year, the city gained $2o.5 million from commercial filming alone. So to see D.C. based films and TV shows get outsourced to other states is definitely a sad thing for the city, and filmmakers alike, to see.