Blueberry Fields Forever

When Universal Pictures brought Traveling to Seattle last March to film for four days on location, more than a few people’s hearts were aflutter (and not just the denizens of Pike Place Market, where the film crew created a traffic jam in Post Alley).

Traveling, scheduled for release late this year or early next and co-written and produced by Seattleite Mike Thompson, is about a widower-turned-self-help-guru (Aaron Eckhart) who comes to Seattle on business and falls for a florist (Jennifer Aniston). With two major stars and a local creative connection, the whole project had the potential to put Seattle back on Hollywood producers’ maps in a big way—if only the majority of it had been filmed here, instead of in Vancouver.

“Traveling was written by a Seattle writer, set in Seattle and had other Seattle ties. Doesn’t matter,” says James Keblas, director since 2005 of the Seattle Mayor’s Office of Film + Music. “It is still cheaper to film in Vancouver than Seattle.”

In 2007, Keblas traveled to Los Angeles with Suzy Kellett, then director of the Washington State Film Office (she retired last spring after 12 years in the office), and Amy Lillard Dee, executive director of WashingtonFilmWorks, the 501(c)6 organization created by Washington’s Motion Picture Competitiveness Program, which Gov. Christine Gregoire signed into law in 2006. WashingtonFilmWorks offers a 20 percent rebate incentive for in-state production (made possible thanks to donations from businesses and individuals who get dollar-for-dollar tax credits in return); Keblas, Kellett and Dee hoped the rebate would persuade Traveling producers to film the entire production in Seattle. For the first time in the history of film production in Washington and Seattle, Keblas, Kellett and Dee had farm-fresh money—as much as $1 million per production on qualified in-state expenditures—to sweeten the pot. But in the confusing and competitive international production incentive game, $1 million was not enough. (As one local Seattle producer says, it’s “chump change.”)

Traveling did spend enough during its four-day sortie to receive a $294,642 rebate, which Keblas, Kellett and Dee deemed a small but crucial victory in the battle to lure Hollywood productions back to Seattle and Washington.

Like 88 Minutes (2008, starring Al Pacino) and the opener of the 2008 Seattle International Film Festival, Battle in Seattle (starring Charlize Theron and Woody Harrelson), Traveling is a “runaway production,” meaning a film set in Seattle but which skirts our town to save money. (All three abovementioned films were shot in Vancouver.) Productions can and will “green-screen” principal actors into scenes in setting locations, filmed by second units. In the case of Traveling, Jennifer Aniston will be digitally dropped into a scene with Aaron Eckhart, who was actually on location for scenes filmed near the Fremont troll and Pike Place Market’s infamous gum wall. It’s one way that a business notorious for cost overruns and bloated budgets saves some money. “There is no other comparable reason than money for films set in Seattle to skip up to Vancouver,” says Keblas, who believes Seattle is about 10 years behind Vancouver in maturing its film production industry.

Since 1997, productions in British Columbia and Vancouver get as much as 25 percent back on what they pay to qualified labor (Canadian residents) in the form of tax credits. “We really did woo the Los Angeles industry,” says British Columbia’s film commissioner Susan Croome. “And we saw a commitment from certain people like [actor, writer, producer] Stephen J. Cannell and Paramount in the early days, where they came here and they loved it and did a lot of episodic television, which really provide Jamie Friddle http://seattlemag.com/files/image/main/large/08aug5.jpg Arts + Events Articles
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