VEDP President and CEO Jason El Koubi spoke with Andy Edmunds about the ins and outs of the film industry in Virginia and the economic impact of film production.

El Koubi: Tell us a little bit more about what production companies and studios look for when they’re identifying a filming location. We talk about it all the time — Virginia is beautiful. Virginians love this state. The quality of life here is awesome. You can get it all — mountains, beaches, big cities, picturesque small towns. What other things beyond aesthetics are companies looking for in a film location?

Edmunds: Money. It’s a business endeavor, right? There’s an old saying — it’s not show fun, it’s showbiz. We used to compete on that palette, the aesthetics of Virginia, and on the great experience they would have coming here to film, and the great crew base we would have to support this type of manufacturing. But over the years, it’s evolved.

We used to go to a trade show every year, the LocationEXPO, where film commissions from around the world would have booths with pictures of your beautiful state and your beautiful country. Producers would come through and interact with you based on the artistic solution and some of the logistical solutions to their problems.

But then it became about incentives, tax credits, grants. So, you would walk around that same trade show a few years later and you would have some pictures, but really, you’d have more like 20% off, 30% off, 35% off. It looked like a flea market after a while. It became an economic exercise more than just the location. No matter how great our locations or our relationships are, the phone doesn’t even ring if you aren’t able to say you have a competitive incentive program.

I like that our incentive program is very modest compared to other states. For example, Georgia’s a big competitor, and they have about $1.2 billion a year in tax credits to buy jobs and bring the work to Georgia. We have about $10.5 million per year. $10.5 million versus $1.2 billion makes it very hard to be competitive. However, by adding innovative things like the State Farm with free locations, it saves time. We have other assets like being able to use Capitol Square as a backlot to film certain things.

We just recently did the miniseries “Dopesick” on Hulu. Very important show about the opioid crisis, and we were proud to be a part of telling that story. But they needed a huge production office compound. We were able to partner with the Virginia Employment Commission and the Department of General Services to use the abandoned building on Main Street in Richmond for their production office. That allowed them to take that line item off their budget. Instead of having to write them a huge check as an incentive, we could put that in the mix to create an innovative holistic deal.

That’s what I respect about VEDP and the work you guys do so well. We really think through innovative ways to attract work that are not just opening up the checkbook and saying, “Come.” Like the Amazon HQ2 — we followed that deal very closely, where New York was offering billions of dollars. We were able to craft a brilliant plan that said, “We’re going to use academic partners, and we’re going to build some infrastructure that we need anyway, and we will provide this incentive if you show us the receipts in a few years of the jobs you’ve created.”

Edmunds: It’s about 24% above the state average, I believe. There are about 5,100 people statewide in production. It’s about a $1.1-billion-a-year industry. This includes not just the movies you see press releases about, but a lot of post-production activity in Northern Virginia. It’s Discovery Channel, History Channel, commercial.
 
People think, “Well, these are temporary jobs,” but really, they’re not temporary. It’s just like the construction business is temporary. You have a developer come in, they create a project, the construction crew builds this factory or building, and then they move on to another project. They’re only temporary in that there are multiple projects per year that you keep the workforce employed on.
 
These are permanent careers as long as you can induce the workflow to keep people occupied. If the construction business fell down a hole, all those electricians and HVAC workers would not have jobs. We’re in the same kind of situation that they’re not temporary jobs. They’re also good jobs, as I said, with great wages, but they’re jobs and it’s an industry that doesn’t create a lot of waste.
 
It’s also an industry that can have positive cultural impact. One of the greatest movies we did here was called “Loving,” which is about the Loving v. Virginia case back in the 1950s, where an interracial couple was thrown in jail just for getting married. A movie like that, which has cultural significance to recognize injustice and put this story in context, has future ramifications for people to understand empathy, where we’ve come as a nation, and where we probably need to go. I love it when there’s a project that has super-positive economic and cultural impact, like “Dopesick,” “Harriet,” and “Loving.”
 
El Koubi: Let’s pick up on that, because that’s another big positive of Virginia’s film industry, isn’t it? We’re both in the business of promoting Virginia. In the case of VEDP, an economic development organization, we’re promoting Virginia to the world as a business investment location. The Virginia Tourism Corporation promotes Virginia as a place to visit.
 
And a big part of how people learn about our state is through what they see in the media, on film. Can you talk about that aspect of the film industry’s impact? What do we know about how people are learning about Virginia because of this activity?
 
Edmunds: It’s interesting. For example, when we’re doing a VEDP project, we know we’re building this factory or operation, and we’ll employ 250 people. They’re going to make this amount of money, it’s going to generate this much payroll tax for this amount of time. You can more easily evaluate the value of that project.
 
With what we do, it’s a little harder to measure because how do you measure community pride, for example? We did the movie “Big Stone Gap” years ago — Adriana Trigiani, Virginia writer — and she wanted to film in her hometown, Big Stone Gap, Va. Not a lot of movie production happens out in Big Stone Gap, but we wanted to make sure they had support to film this movie in the town where the story was set.
 
We went out there and filmed, and it was such an amazing experience for the community. They had a parade, they had a screening. How do you measure community pride? That’s something of value certainly for our residents, but it’s not something you can measure on a spreadsheet.
 
Take, for example, the movie “Dirty Dancing.” Mountain Lake Resort out in Giles County. Forty years ago, they filmed this movie. Forty years later, people still plan their vacations around going to see where Patrick Swayze did “Dirty Dancing.” They run dance contests. We’ve had four different spinoffs, from Australia and all over the world, that come and do shows. That does not get measured in the blender of really understanding the true economic impact of film in this state. But it’s definitely something with impact, if you talk to Heidi Stone at Mountain Lake Resort about what it means to their business to have this iconic movie as a marketing tool for decades.
 
I’ve had other intangible, just amazing experiences over the years. For example, we shot the movie “Evan Almighty” up in Crozet, outside of Charlottesville, and we had to build a full-size Noah’s Ark. It was massive.
 
It cost millions of dollars to build all these sets in this little neighborhood in Crozet. One day we were scouting in Waynesboro for a scene we wanted to shoot. The director, Tom Shadyac, who went to UVA, is a big cycling enthusiast. There was a little bike shop on the streets of Waynesboro. We walk into a small Virginia business, he meets the bike shop owner, becomes friends with him, and finds out that his wife is having some health issues, and their business is struggling.
 
Tom says, “Well, you know what? I want to buy a bicycle for everyone on this crew from this shop.” Of course, the owner didn’t have all the bikes — he had to order them. But Tom bought 300-some bicycles for every member of that crew. They’re riding all over the set on little Beach Cruisers. It saved that guy’s business. Changed his world. So, it’s not just about crew members on the job making the movie or TV show at the time.
 
It’s hard to measure economic reality, but there are also other amazing personal experiences I’ve witnessed. I don’t know if you remember a TV show called “Turn.” It was about George Washington’s spies and how Washington used espionage as a tool to win the Revolution. I’d never heard the story. But it was a great show and we filmed four seasons here.
 
This woman from Lynchburg said, “Hey, our son really loves this show, and it seems to be the only thing we can connect on,” because her 24-year-old son had autism. But he studied the show, he knew all the history, knew all the characters depicted, could rattle them off. They really would focus as a family — mother, father, and son — and got into the show because the son knew the data like no one else.
 
She wrote one day and told me about her son, asking, “Do you think you could send a headshot of one of the actors, a signed picture?” And we’re like, “Sure, no problem. I’ll tell you what, we’ll do better than that. Why don’t you come and visit the set?” He came to the State Farm set, sat in the director’s chair, and met all the actors. He knew more about their parts than they did. They were just fascinated that this kid knew all the details about John André and Benedict Arnold, all the characters. The mother wrote back the next day and said, “This was the best day of his life.” How do you measure that? There are hundreds of stories like that.

El Koubi: You clearly love this work. You talked about how your personal and professional lives and responsibilities are integrated and intertwined. A couple personal questions, such as is there a favorite movie or TV show for you that was shot in Virginia?
 
Edmunds: There are a couple, but one of the most profound experiences was when we did the movie “The New World” with Terrence Malick, who’s an amazing filmmaker, just world-renowned, about the Jamestown story.
 
This movie is like visual poetry. Some people didn’t understand it, thought it was kind of slow, a little long. Really, it was a beautiful metaphorical story about the loss of innocence. When the Native Americans came up on the bluff looking down the James River and saw these big ships coming in, it was like aliens arriving. That scene we made was incredible.
 
But the experience was developing that film and building a Jamestown fort, for example, on the Chickahominy River within two or three miles of actual Jamestown. Jack Fisk, the production designer, did tons of research and built it with organic materials from the area — logs and twine — just a super handmade fort. It was so profound that before we started filming, we brought in Dr. William Kelso from Jamestown to see the fort that Jack had created, and it was 360 degrees, full-scale, everywhere you look. Dr. Kelso started crying when he saw it. He said, “This was probably what it looked like.”
 
Jack estimated how he thought they constructed the bulwarks on the corners. He didn’t know — he just said, “If I had natural materials locally, this is how I would build it.” Four or five years later, in the archaeological dig at Jamestown, they discovered they had built them the way Jack had guessed.
 
El Koubi: That’s amazing. I was going to ask you about the most interesting projects you’ve worked on in Virginia, but that might be it.
 
Edmunds: This was so interesting because being born and raised in Virginia and having built that fort with Popsicle sticks when I was a kid, and visiting Jamestown with all of our kids, going on that field trip to Williamsburg and Jamestown, to now as an adult with other adults spending millions of dollars to build a fort and a Native American village and use the ships.
 
El Koubi: Andy, I have one last question, and it’s about telling the story. You love this state, you know it so well. Is there a Virginia story you’d really like to see on screen that has not been done so far?
 
Edmunds: The Beale Treasure. Everybody loves a good treasure hunt, right? Out near Lynchburg.
 
El Koubi: Tell me about this.
 
Edmunds: The Beale Treasure was supposedly the lost treasure of the Confederacy where they hid all this gold. There have been multiple documentaries about it. People for years have been going through old treasure maps trying to find the Beale Treasure, but no one’s ever found it. Is it real? Was it a hoax? People believe it’s real, but I think this is a great “National Treasure”-type story where you can see Bradley Cooper or someone doing this film. I think it’s a great story.
 
I love documentary film, too. There’s an amazing documentary out on Tangier Island. This guy came and lived on the island for, I think, six months, really got to know the community, and made this beautiful documentary about the island, its culture, and how we’re losing that culture. And not only topographically losing the island, but the culture of small town and community, how important that is to our nation.
 
The film is called “Been Here Stay Here.” That type of film was so important to me as a Virginian, to share that important cultural story with the world. It’s going to be fascinating. I think it will win a lot of awards. He lived on the island, earned the community’s trust — once again, the most important word — and made this film.
 
El Koubi: Andy Edmunds, thank you for the incredible partnership that you bring every day to this work and for this fascinating conversation on Virginia Economic Review. This has been so much fun.
 
Edmunds: Thank you for the work you do.

For the full interview, visit www.vedp.org/Podcasts