Looking ahead, Lemisch sees ’08 as being “very similar” to ’07 in feature film production, which means a continuing downward trend, as ’06 was down from ’05. “I honestly don’t see much improvement on the horizon,” she says. ”In fact, I think it’ll be a very tough year ahead for the state.” And just when tax incentives would help the most, there seems to be more disappointing news from Sacramento. “I think it’s going to be a very difficult year for the state legislature to implement any tax breaks. For a start, they’re already anticipating a pretty bad deficit, and then like everywhere else we have the mortgage crisis to deal with. And we also have all the fallout from the fires. We have the strike. Taken all together, that’s going to make it very tough for us.” On a more positive note, she stresses that the state, still has more production going on than anyplace else in the country, or world – apart from India. “So it’s not all gloom and doom, though we really hate to lose the features as they provide so many jobs for people.”

“We generally average about 200 feature films per year from the very low budget to the big studio features,” says Lemisch. Major feature shoots this year included Lions for Lambs, Superbad, All About Steve, and The Heartbreak Kid. She stresses that the California Film Commission works closely with most of the bigger action films such as IronMan, Hancock, and Get Smart because these inevitably involve stunts and precision driving scenes on our freeways.  “Filming on freeways requires advance notice and a lot of pre-planning with the various jurisdictions that may be affected by the road closures.  One of our state buildings - the Caltrans headquarters in downtown L.A. - is a very popular filming location for features, TV series, and commercials because of its stark modern concrete design.  Hancock starring Will Smith recently dressed it as a large city hospital exterior. Outside of the realm of state properties, our network of regional film offices work closely with productions filming across the state. Grindhouse for instance did most of their shooting near Santa Barbara.”

The California Film Commission also recently launched a new Web-based resource to promote environmentally-conscious film production.  The Green Resource Guide was designed to help productions reduce their environmental impact with information and tools for finding resources such as post-consumer products, sustainably farmed lumber, food banks that accept surplus meals and bio-diesel generators.  This guide will streamline the process of green production to make it easier for productions to become environmentally friendly.

San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom announced that the production of the feature film Milk is slated to film entirely in the city beginning in January.  Academy Award-nominated director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) will direct the biographical drama, and the film will star Academy Award-winner Sean Penn as gay-rights icon Harvey Milk. The film will base its operations on the city’s Treasure Island. In addition, the film will qualify for the film production incentive program known as “Scene in San Francisco,” which was introduced by Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier and signed into legislation in May 2006. “We tailored the deal to meet everyone’s needs, and the outcome will be an influx of spending by the production company and the creation of hundreds of jobs for local union workers,” said the Film Commission’s executive director Stefanie Coyote. San Francisco will also host the feature film Four Christmases for two weeks in December. The comedy involves a couple, played by Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn, struggling to visit all four of their divorced parents on Christmas Day. In the meantime, commercial production and still photography shoots remain consistent, says the film commission. Productions continue to make use of San Francisco’s iconic landmarks by taking exterior shots over the course of just a few days and filming the bulk of the film or television production elsewhere.