Baton Rouge Mayor-President Kip Holden announced Thursday that production on the second season of the A&E series “Breakout Kings” will relocate to Baton Rouge, remarking that the Red Stick is “rapidly gaining a reputation as the Hollywood of the South.”
Cut.
The Hollywood of the South?
It’s not that the comparison is entirely inaccurate.   Louisiana surpassed Los Angeles in film production in 2010, according to the New Orleans Office of Film & Video. It’s that it ignores one of Tinseltown’s most prominent features.
Film schools.
Whereas the Los Angeles filmmaking community enjoys the resources of world-renowned film and theater programs — UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television and USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, for example — there’s nothing of the sort in Baton Rouge.
Instead, the University offers a Redbox machine in the Student Union and an undergraduate minor in film and media arts (FMA).
(FML).
A minor? Even the University of Louisiana at Lafayette offers a moving image arts major.
But even as LSU’s FMA program expands to include a major beginning fall 2012, University and LSU System administrators still have it backwards. Literally. Louisiana’s flagship institution ought to have a graduate course of study and a professional school, not an FMA program, but an MFA program — one that confers Master of Fine Arts degrees in film and theater.
For University alumna Lisa Kirchner, graduate student at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, “Louisiana is continuing to grow as a mecca for film and television” because of the tax incentives it offers prospective film productions. These currently include a 30 percent transferable incentive for total in-state expenditures related to the production of a motion picture and a 5 percent labor incentive to hire Louisiana residents.
According to a report issued by the state, every $1 of tax credits issued generates a total economic output of $5.71 for film production, which “presents something of a positive anomaly,” in comparison with national trends for such incentives in other states.
But the report is particularly mum on how the incentives have impacted local talent.
Kasey Emas, actress, model and English senior, said LSU students are “definitely talented” but “don’t have a chance to showcase their talent.” In spite of the 5 percent labor incentive — and maybe just because of its meagerness — Emas relates that many of the productions she’s been involved in, including “Twilight: Breaking Dawn” and “21 Jump Street,” hire almost exclusively from states like Los Angeles and New York, not Louisiana.
That, in turn, is a negative anomaly.
“The problem,” she said, “is that we don’t have many legitimate film programs in Louisiana.”
While the tax incentives have resulted in the meteoric rise of the state’s film industry, Kirchner is doubtful about that trend’s continuation without the LSU System’s commitment to “home-grown” talent.
“Louisiana is not producing its own talent to help contribute to its growth,” she said. “California has its George Lucases and Stephen Spielbergs, and New York its Martin Scorseses and Spike Lees, but who does Louisiana really have?”
She cites LSU screenwriter-in-residence and almnus Zack Godshall, for one, as an example of Louisiana’s unique filmmaking talent. “Lord Byron,” Godshall’s most recent offering, premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, where Paste Magazine film editor Michael Dunaway remarked that in spite of a sparse budget and a modest production value, “its charms [were] considerable” — which is an ironically apt description of Louisiana, as well, where “Lord Byron” was produced.
Godshall, an alumnus of UCLA’s School of Theatre, Film and Television, decided to pursue his filmmaking career in Louisiana, and I’ll venture that such a decision had nothing to do with tax incentives.
“There truly is no other place like Louisiana,” explained Kirchner, “and that’s what makes this state so unique, and that’s what’s going to draw filmmakers to it.”
Forget that last part, though. Louisiana doesn’t need to attract any more filmmakers — they’re right at home, already.
Unless, like Kirchner and a number of LSU alumni interested in the film industry, they’ve already left.
Lights. Camera. Stupefaction.
Phil Sweeney is a 25-year-old English senior from New Orleans. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_PhilSweeney.
 
____
Contact Phil Sweeney at [email protected].