KnoxvilleFilms.com

East Tennessee has become hot lately in the search of locations for multiple movie and television projects. We need your help to try to land a movie project. The production company is concerned about finding a key location. They Need: An old, rundown two-story motel that encircles a huge Olympic-sized swimming pool.

If anyone knows of a location that may fit the description, please contact Thomas Duncan 865-246-2629 or email tduncan@knoxillechamber.com with any suggestions.

Thank you for your help.
Thomas Duncan
Project Coordinator, ETTFC

The latest blow to the East Tennessee production community could have the longest repercussions. As production continues to fall off, we have now lost our local film and television commissioner, Michael Barnes. Barnes played a pivotal role in helping to secure the TN Film Incentives which are already being considered for the state chopping block.

I worked closely with Mike on various projects for most of the duration of his term as Commissioner and both myself and all of Knoxville Films will be very sad to see him leave. Without a full time commissioner, the East Tennessee production community will have no representation at the state capitol. This also leaves out of state productions no central office to help coordinate production with. If we lose ONE MOVIE as a result of this, many freelancers will lose significant money in what is already a down year.

Knoxville Films would like to wish Mike all the best in his future endeavours. He will be missed.

For the full story check out the Metro Pulse story by Mike Gibson.

Please email any photographs to: Michael Barnes - mbarnes@knoxvillechamber.com or Thomas Duncan – tduncan@knoxvillechamber.com.

Include with the photographs the county and address of where the photograph was taken or other location information, photographer and house / landowner contact phone numbers, and email addresses.

Please feel free to forward this to anyone you know who could possibly help…local photographers, real estate people, business people, government, etc…

Things are heating up for a location needed to help bring a movie project to East Tennessee. A trip by the producers and location people is expected to take place as early as the weekend of the 17th and 18th of May (no rush here).

Do understand: They are planning to severely damage or destroy this farm house. Negotiations for any compensation will be handled between the property owner and the producers. This is an independent made-for-TV film.

The other requirements for the house were copied and pasted from their emails and are included below:

1 - We'd need to be free to basically destroy it: Tear down walls/porch roofs/entire sections of the house and/or remodel it.

2 - The house needs to be two stories, but also fairly small and compact in a simple rectangle/square design.

3 - The ceilings of the ground floor would have to be pretty high and, likewise, the second story and the windows for the second story would have to be as high up from the ground as possible. ie Though it needs to be fairly small in terms of square-footage, we need a tall house, one in which people on the second story couldn't easily leap down from. (Or be really quickly lowered down on a sheet, in Bird's case.)

4 - The main room downstairs (as well as the stairs themselves) must be configured in a very specific way.

5 - The house needs to be in the middle of nowhere all by itself with no other signs of civilization in sight. It needs to be in an open field with woodlands facing the front the door. The road leading to it needs to be dirt. The road can't split off past the house to imply that other houses are nearby.

“The living room needs to at least resemble the diagrams, though of course, it doesn't have to be spot on down to the tiniest measurement. The most important things are that it's a big, wide, deep room with lots of floor space (comparable to the footage in the diagrams), that the stairs are in the room extending up along one wall, and that they disappear into the ceiling. (ie The top of them isn't visible from the floor of the room, unless you're standing right in front of the stairs.)

From the living room, Sade needs to leap out a ground floor window on the wall adjacent to the front door. If there isn't a window on the adjacent wall and there's instead another room on the other side of the wall, then we need to be able to tear down that wall and make the living room and that new room one big open area in order for the front door to have a window adjacent to it.

We might need to tear down entire walls, tear down the porch (there can't be a porch roof for Bird or Carter to escape out onto), make new windows, tear down stairs and rebuild them differently (and maybe in a different spot), etc. Stuff like that.

And no matter what house we get, we'll need to tear down a large portion of the entire front wall of the bottom floor, exposing the living room to the outside, so we can shoot into the room like it's a dollhouse. (We'll shoot this last, obviously. :)

So though we wouldn't exactly be bulldozing the entire structure to the ground, we'd certainly be leaving it in a pretty destroyed state. (Especially considering an entire portion of the front wall will be missing and the bottom floor will be open to nature.)

“Finding a house that fits the guidelines of what we need just became our biggest challenge, so we'll probably spend the greatest amount of time checking out houses during the trip”.

Coming up on April 29th, 2008, the East Tennessee Television & Film Commission will be hosting the East Tennessee Television & Film Tradeshow at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Downtown Knoxville. Equipment manufacturers, Workshops, Lunch with a speaker (TBA), and Networking opportunities.

Tennessee now has $20 million to use as incentives. The Governor line-itemed an additional $10 million this year for the effort!

I know from my experience at the TN Film Commission, that LOTS of projects looked at East TN as a possible location, and I don't doubt for a minute that East TN will reap the benefits of the incentives in due time. For a lot of reasons, the incentives have been slow to create business in the State, but I don't expect that to last. And, although, Middle TN folks are madly at work trying to bring a cushy project here, it hasn't happened here yet either.

Memphis & Linn Sitler are so unique in their efforts. Linn Sitler is a MASTER recruiter & she does most of it with no help or preference from the TN Film Commission. Both Shelby County & the city of Memphis sweeten the pot for production co's with incentives of their own & Linn practically LIVES with the production co's when they come there to scout! It's not about crew. Memphis has a relatively small crew base and must pull from Nashville to get "A" crew types, but the hospitality and ambience of Memphis are incredible.

It's been really hard for all of us with an interest in the film industry to be patient with state money to spend and no one buying...but I KNOW that Perry Gibson is working like crazy to get projects here, and she will. I also KNOW that nobody at the State office CARES where the project goes, and there is NO effort to put a project in one location as opposed to the other. For them, it's all based on the script and what specific locations the producers are seeking.

1) The past several weeks have been very busy here at the East Tennessee Television & Film Commission. We are currently attempting to recruit eight (make that 8) different feature movie projects into the Knoxville and East Tennessee region. The one we have not counted is “Amateurs”, scheduled to start production sometime in late September, 2007.
The Tennessee Film Entertainment and Music Commission (TFEMC) and the East Tennessee Television & Film Commission (ETTFC) offices have been working very hard to recruit movies into East Tennessee (The TFEMC has been working hard with the other regions as well). With the incentives now clearly in place, our region has finally been getting looks and visits from the LA studios, outside and local independent filmmakers. To that end, we have had a commitment made by one independent feature (Amateurs) and a locations visit by the Writer/Director and Producer of another independent feature this past week. Pictures and information have been sent to try to recruit projects with budgets ranging from $5 to $100 million dollars.
The East Tennessee Television & Film Commission will put out more information as it becomes available.

2. POTENTIAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY: If you have an interest in working, as crew (Paid positions and / or internships) on an independent feature to be potentially shot here in East Tennessee next spring, please email your professional information to: lightaday@aol.com. The Writer/Director and one of the Producers visited here this past weekend and are very impressed with our locations. However, they want to know we have the crew base to support a full feature. The sooner you respond, the better our opportunity is for recruiting this project to our region.
Please call or email Michael Barnes at the East Tennessee Television & Film Commission for further information. Phone: 865-246-2633 or mbarnes@knoxvillechamber.com.