Movie-Making Incentives Proposed

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Movies

Wednesday, 28 November 2012 02:47

By caribarena news

Antigua St. John's - Antigua must position itself in the global film industry “location market” held annually in various parts of the world, where film location managers and others who help pick locations for movies meet.

The country has initiated steps to attract filmmaking professionals to these shores through a recently-concluded incentive package that will appear before Cabinet shortly.

Film producer Mitch Sacharoff made the recommendation at the close of the recently concluded second annual International Film Festival of Antigua & Barbuda (IFFAB).

Sacharoff said this positioning is done simply through the setup and effective management of a booth, complete with pictures and videos of the country. These experts, he explained, would spend an average of two days simply walking around the market, gathering information and talking to respective representatives about the possibilities of the individual locations.

“I can help being in Los Angeles if there is a booth there. I can talk to Bert (Kirchner) more about that and somebody from the New York Tourism Board to come down there,” Sacharoff volunteered.

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The producer explained that what Antigua wants is to simply let the world know how easy it is to make a movie in Antigua & Barbuda, especially considering the recently concluded talks of an incentive package completed in collaboration with the government. This package is to be discussed shortly by Cabinet.

“If you have that booth, when they over and stop at the Bahamas and Jamaica booths, they will stop at our booth. And we need to show them that we are in the ball game as far as making it financially viable for them to come,” Sacharoff said.

Further, he added that outside of the instances of paradise, Antigua stands to benefit from the reviving genre of pirate movies, which have so far only touched the shores of sister states in the OECS – Dominica and St Vincent.

“We definitely need to be at the location market so that the people who are there scouting locations can tell the directors what they have seen and where to go. We need to be in that ball game... That is the focus… We need to be represented there,” Sacharoff said.

In explaining the incentive package in question, Bert Kirchner said his association had sat down with the government of Antigua & Barbuda and developed the package, which has now been passed to Cabinet for approval. He said the package was built from blueprints of the industries in both the booming Bahamas and Trinidad & Tobago, and made more attractive than both.

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