The Australian Screen Production Incentive, introduced in 2007, “has greatly assisted Ausfilm’s production attraction efforts in a tough and highly-competitive global market,” explains Gibson. It is comprised of “three mutually exclusive strands and can be combined with Australia’s State and Territory-established, content-attraction grants and incentive schemes to make for a substantial payment,” says Gibson.

So what are the three strands? First, there is the Location Offset:  a 15 percent rebate on Qualifying Australian Production Expenditure (QAPE), which applies as long as the expenditure amounts to at least AU$15 million, though it may not be combined with the PDV or Producer Offsets. Next, the Post, Digital and Visual Effects Production (PDV) Offset:  a 15 percent rebate on QAPE for productions spending at least AU$5 million in PDV expenditure (including green-screen photography, orchestration, salaries, per diems, and travel for post and visual effects crews). The project doesn’t even need to have principal photography in Australia to qualify. Finally, the Producer Offset:  available exclusively for Australian producers (official co-productions included), with as much as a 40 percent rebate on feature films, with budgets over AU$1 million. Projects must include a high level of involvement by Australian creative team.

In addition, “Australia’s cast, crws and technicians are talented and are renowned for their creativity, expertise and hard work,” says Caroline Pitcher, Ausfilm’s chief executive. “Over the last 10 years Australian creative companies, crews and technicians have worked on some of the world’s largest-budget productions and biggest box office hits this century.”
Some of the more recent productions include Baz Luhrmann’s Australia with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, the horror/vampire movie Daybreakers starring Ethan Hawke and DreamWorks’ The Ruins, which shot at the Warner Roadshow Studios.

Productions in Australia (including foreign post, digital and visual effects) spent AU$625 million in fiscal year 2006/2007 on local expenditures, a significant increase over the previous year’s AU$371 million.

The state of Victoria has experienced a boom in production over the past five years, generating more than $300 million and more than 7,000 full time-equivalent positions. Film Victoria CEO Sandra Sdraulig explains how the state has attracted huge productions, such as Ghost Rider with Nicholas Cage, Paramount Pictures’ Charlotte’s Web starring Dakota Fanning¸ Where the Wild Things Are directed by Oscar-nominated Spike Jonze, and Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg’s The Pacific, a 10-part HBO series.

Sdraulig boast of Victoria’s “amazing array of locations that can match almost any script ─ from European streetscapes to beautiful bushland, and Melbourne itself is a multi-cultural city with architecture that spans almost every style imaginable” 
They’ve been working with offices throughout the state to make filming in Victoria very cost effective.  Among the incentives offered is the Production Attraction Incentive Fund (PIAF), managed by Film Victoria’s Melbourne Film Office. It’s designed to attract interstate or offshore productions to film in the state of Victoria. Footloose projects that spend a minimum of 70 percent of the total production budget in Victoria or a minimum of AU$3.5 million are eligible for this grant.

Sdraulig adds that these financial incentives are accompanied by “a tremendous depth of crew” and “state-of-the-art studios” that have made an impression on directors, producers, and actors.  It’s no wonder,” she says, “that Nicholas Cage will be returning to Melbourne in late March 2008 to film Summit Entertainment’s $45 million thriller Knowing.  Although originally planning to shoot around 5 percent of the production in Victoria, DreamWorks SKG’s The Pacific will now be filming 80 percent of the production in the state.  “Uniformly, shooting here is an exceptional experience for any production team involved” comments Sdraulig. “Victoria is a place to be discovered─ and it’s being discovered now.”