My buddy O’Neal Compton wrote this editorial for The State and I thought I would share it here with you.  You can see from the video above he knows his way around the film industry and in the last couple of years he has been busting his ass to get more business in South Carolina.

Compton: Embarking on a

journey to Film City, S.C.

“Where is it,” you ask, “this place, Film City? I never heard of such a place. Is it a new tourist attraction at Myrtle Beach?”

No, heavens no, nothing like that; you’re thinking of Planet Hollywood.

I have this conversation with lots of folks when I hand them my calling card, which lists my address as Film City, South Carolina (no zip code). When this happens, my card has done its job, having prompted the desired inquiry. This gives me the only opening I need to mount my soapbox to extol the virtues of my beloved little triangle of a state, which has the most beautiful light this side of the South of France and the ability to duplicate, with authenticity, any decade from 1690 until the present day.

Yes, South Carolina, preserved in all of her raw beauty, by our natural hesitancy to tear down and throw away anything, even the rottenest tobacco barn, is a filmmaker’s paradise. I have known this for years, having produced hundreds of film commercials and acted in several feature films here since the 1980s.

There is no question that we have the beautiful light, the period locations and the magnificent landscapes that make filmmakers gasp with delight when they come to scout our state for their film projects. Just ask the producers of “Forrest Gump,” “The Patriot,” “The Notebook,” “Cold Mountain,” “The Prince of Tides,” “The Big Chill” or “Sleeping With the Enemy,” to name a few.

Unfortunately, big-budget films like these come few and far between to South Carolina because we lack one key element that serious filmmakers must have and other nearby states have in abundance: film infrastructure – sound stages, studio facilities and post-production facilities. North Carolina has 32 stages and seven studio complexes with two new stages under construction. South Carolina has one very small stage.

It was hoped that the infrastructure tax credits passed into law 10 years ago would have enabled us to begin to catch up to our sister states, but the S.C. Film Office has stubbornly refused to promote infrastructure development, preferring instead to continue to sell our state as a tourist destination (a location state), concentrating on short-term gimmickry such as “producer incentives,” which have cost the taxpayers of this state $45 million in the past three years to lure a long list of mostly undistributed films nobody will ever hear about.

So what do we have to show for our $45 million? It’s an excellent question and one that Gov. Mark Sanford and Commerce Secretary Joe Taylor (and The State) have asked as well. Not one new permanent job has been created, and no new stages have been built. Most of the incentives in the past year have been soaked up by a low-budget, non-network TV show shooting in a warehouse in Charleston, so there are no funds left in the pot, even if a legitimate film were to come along.

This nonproductive waste of time and money is what Joe Taylor objected to, and it was his hard questions that drove Film Office Director Jeff Monks to plead with the Legislature to give him some relief by moving the office back to the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism. But Parks Director Chad Prosser is a businessman, too. He can see that the producer incentives are not achieving the desired result. In fact, everybody (except the handful of people directly benefiting from the expenditure of the $45 million) can see that we’re getting a pretty poor return on our investment.

That $45 million, if applied as tax credits, would have subsidized 30 sound stages.

Furthermore, we’d be much better off using our $15 million a year to buy equity stakes in small independent feature films. For $15 million, we could purchase about half of the equity in three independent films per year with guaranteed distribution. The fund would, of course, be available to filmmakers who want to shoot their films here in South Carolina.

We should also put our Clemson and USC engineers and architects to work converting high-ceiling textile plants into high-tech sound stages. While we’re at it, we should create a statewide film school (through our state universities) with advanced film degrees. We have all the ingredients to create a billion-dollar industry that can change the employment picture in our state dramatically in a few short years with a minimum of public investment. We just need to look around us. It’s all here.

Film City, South Carolina. It’s not that far. Really.

Mr. Compton is an actor, writer and producer who blogs at thewholeamericanhog.com.