Film Alaska! Incentives designed to attract film industry to Alaska.

• Author: Bohi, Heidi
• Position: IT'S SHOWTIME!

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

When word got out that Hollywood would be producing "The Proposal," a movie that is set in Sitka and stars actress Sandra Bullock, members of the film community went to Los Angeles to meet with Walt Disney Co. to find out how the state's industry could get in on helping produce the Alaska-based script. Multimillion dollar feature films often mean hundreds--sometimes thousands--of jobs for everyone from local grips and gaffers to cinematographers and walk-on extras, and for small towns it can mean a nice boost for government coffers, small businesses and tourism destinations.

Carolyn Robinson, owner and executive producer of Anchorage film production company Sprocketheads and a board member for the Alaska Film Group, says, as she and her two colleagues chatted with the studio executive in charge of production, they learned that, in fact, Disney would be filming the Alaska story in the seaside community of Rockport, Mass. It was less expensive and Massachusetts, like most states, offers film production companies lucrative incentives to make movies there. It didn't take long to hit the three film industry professionals "like a ton of bricks, a bucket of cold water, a kick in the teeth," she says: if they were going to get movie companies to film in Alaska, as is now common-place with the industry, the state was also going to have to offer incentives worth millions of dollars in lasting economic development benefits.

Steve Rychetnik, Carolyn's husband and director of photography for her business, and Bob Crockett, owner of a location scouting and logistics business, were all at the original meeting. What started out as a discussion about a romantic comedy suddenly started sounding more like the script of a horror film.

HOPES DASHED

"We went in with high hopes," Rychetnik says. "An hour later we came out saying 'holey moley' we don't have a chance because we have nothing in place. We suddenly understood how incentives are driving the film industry nationwide and worldwide."

"The Proposal" is only one example of an Alaska story that was shot somewhere besides Alaska. Columbia Pictures' "30 Days of Night" had a $32 million production budget and was shot in New Zealand. Touchstone Pictures' "The Guardian" had an $80 million budget and was shot in Shreveport, La. Buena Vista Movies' "Mystery, Alaska" ($28 million) and "Snow Dogs" ($33 million) were filmed in Alberta, and Warner Bros.' "Insomnia" ($46 million) and the ABC TV show "Men in Trees" were filmed in British Columbia. "Into the Wild," directed by Scan Penn, was partly...