Will soft money be the next casualty of the recession?

Wisconsin legislators hyping their tax credits for film and TV production

Studios rely on tax incentives from more than 40 states (and other countries) to help cover the cost of production. There’s even an open market for those credits — similar to the derivatives that caused such a mess on Wall Street.

States like New York, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and New Mexico refund as much as 40% of the money studios spend on below-the-line workers for a movie or TV production. The money means producers can be comfortable with a lot more short-term debt, knowing they’ll be repaid.

Now the executives at big studios (and presumably indies) who take advantage of this so-called soft money are feverishly reworking their risk assessments to take into account the probability that some of that rebate money will dry up — a casualty of state governments trying to stay solvent themselves.

“There are forces within each state that are against (soft money) because they look at it as a big giveaway,” said a studio executive. “That’s only going to intensify in the current economic environment.”

Studios worry that shows already in production may see their tax credits revoked, forcing them to be moved to another location, she said. New York, hard hit by the financial meltdown is particularly worrisome since many shows are produced there, and the state has one of the most generous soft money programs. Right now, the state has committed its soft money through 2011.

“It’s all about risk assessment,” she said. “No one knows what’s going to happen.”

Posted under Michael's Blog

Filmaka promises to create A-list directors out of ordinary people who submit videos online. Massify.com is pulling the same stunt with actors, urging its community to vote on who should get the top 20 acting slots in a horror film.

In a contest ending today (Friday), aspiring actors uploaded auditions to the site that were then judged by their peers. Whether those votes actually count toward who gets cast is a question I can’t yet answer; as I write, the site is down to "tally votes" and I haven’t yet had a chance to interview the founders.

 Actress Deborah Geffner ("All That Jazz", "Monk", "ER", "Infestation", among many others) heard about the site when her agent told her she should audition for a horror movie called Ghosts in the Machine. The audition, which was filmed, went like any of the dozens of others she’s done. Then the casting director told her an online community would vote on whether her audition was worth considering — and she would have to upload the video herself.

"I thought that was the real horror movie," she said. "It took me four days to do it."

Check out her audition below.

See Also

• Vetting Filmmakers on the Web

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Marc Esper is NBC Universal’s Vice President of Search.

Five years ago, such a title at a major broadcast network would have been unthinkable. Today, it’s indispensable.

Esper, recruited a year and a half ago from AOL’s brand marketing team, is charged with making sure that NBC Universal’s 40 websites – including properties like Sci Fi Channel, NBC and Universal Pictures  — show up properly in Google and Yahoo!, blogs, YouTube, discussion boards and the myriad other ways users discover content online.

“My view of search is that of a programmer looking at a sea of content,” said Dmitri Ponomarev, Vice President of On Demand, TV Guide Television Group.

 About 60 percent of TV Guide Broadband’s customers come from search engines, including channels on AOL Video, Google Video and YouTube.

Then there’s the brouhaha around a mysterious trailer inserted before a recent Transformers screening in Los Angeles. Surprised audience members saw the handycam-captured destruction of New York, with no title or distinguishing element other than the name of its producer J.J. Abrams. Type JJ Abrams  and Transformers and you get….well, see for yourself.

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