The seven states of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas, form a large part of the geographical heart of America. Stretching from the Canadian border down to the southern states, the region offers producers and directors in film, commercial, and TV a wide variety of looks and locations, from the rugged Badlands of North Dakota to the Great Plains of Kansas. This month we spotlight this region and explore the ways in which they are dealing with the state of production.

MINNESOTA

Lucinda Winter, executive director of the Minnesota Film and TV Board, reports that Snowbate, Minnesota's production incentive, is back and better than ever. “We’re in the second year of Snowbate, which is a reimbursement of up to 15 percent of a project’s Minnesota production expenditures available to feature films, national TV series, commercials, documentaries, and music videos,” she explains. “Snowbate was revived in 2006, and our first year funding brought in about 800 new production job days. We had about 33 projects that took part in the program. Seven of them were features and seven were TV commercials, and we also had eight TV programs and a documentary, so it was an evenly split program. One great thing that came from it was this indie film, Older Than America, which shot here and has now been selected for South By Southwest film festival. We’re very happy about that.”

The state has already seen close to 40 new projects applying for Snowbate in its second year. “They’ve all been approved for Snowbate, including the big, new Coen Brothers film, A Serious Man, slated to start shooting here in mid-’08,” she says. “It’s for Focus Features and is the first studio film we’ve had in a few years, so that’s exciting for us. And it’s great to have them back, as they shot Fargo here, even though it’s set just across the border in North Dakota.” Winter also reports an upswing in commercial production, “partly due to Snowbate and partly because we do have several major corporations and ad agencies based here. Rising costs and travel hassles mean more of them choose to stay here and shoot where possible, and we have great crews and infrastructure.”

MISSOURI

State tax credits are issued to a qualified film production company for up to 35 percent of the amount expended in Missouri for production or production-related activities to facilitate film production in the state. Eligible applicants include any film production company with an expected in-state expenditure budget of at least $100,000 for films more than 30 minutes in length and at least $50,000 for films less than 30 minutes in length.

 According to Jerry Jones, director of the Missouri Film Office, “We had $1.5 million annually that we could award in tax credits and that just went up to $4.5 million at the start of 2008. So we’re just getting going with it and we’ve already seen an increase in the number of applications we’re getting, along with slightly bigger budgets. The old tax credit had a cap per-production of $1 million and the new one eliminates the cap, so we’re not looking at huge budgets, but we’re still looking at features in the $5–12 million range.”

Jones reports that recent production has included Connie Stevens’ directorial debut, Saving Grace B. Jones, as well as a number of low budget indie features. “We also get quite a lot of commercials,” he adds. “We have two main production areas─Kansas City and St. Louis─that do a lot of commercial work and Kansas City has quite a few ad agencies. We also get quite a lot of reality TV work, and shows for HGTV and The Food Network.”

Looking ahead, Jones predicts, “a busy year, based on the applications we’ve already had, but we intend to develop our tax program even further. And the more production we get, the more reason we have to do that.”