I think storytelling is the oldest profession.
So said Michelle Damis of St. Helens, who is an actress, stunt performer, writer and producer at the St. Helens Rotary Club, explaining, “We need to be able to share a story.
Damis is also the local union president of SAG-Aftra (Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) for Oregon and Southwest Washington.
The story to be told, Damis said, is of Oregon as a potential leader in attracting tourism and cinema. The tourism and movie industry, she said, brings in more than $200 million a year to Oregon, but the industry’s goal is $1 billion a year.
One state, Georgia, has made efforts to attract the film industry, creating $5 billion in revenue a year, which Damis says is just money raised from making movies.
Damis told Rotary that Oregon has advantages over the South, especially Louisiana and Georgia.
In New Orleans, she says, it never gets chilly at night. It rains a lot more there than here.
More growers and makers need to know that Oregon has a lot to offer, such as land, no sales tax, a better climate than the South, and two hours more daylight in the summer than Georgia and Louisiana, according to Damis.
However, Damis added that negative views on Oregon persist due to the recent Portland riots.
The heart of getting productions, she told Rotary, is the incentive for filmmaking.
The film incentive is administered by the Oregon Film Office, a state agency that provides tax credit funding for animation, commercials, documentaries, feature films, game shows, pilots, reality television, scripted television and video games. Location production needs are ocean beaches, cities, deserts, forests, lakes, rivers, mountains, river areas, snow, and suburbs. The incentives amount to discounts of 20% to 26.2%.
Damis said the Oregon Film Office and Travel Oregon are state agencies that regularly work together on film tourism. That, she says, includes the development of the Oregon Film Trail, which is the first of its kind in the United States and now has nearly 40 signs statewide, directing people to Oregon attractions. Agencies also provide local tourism boards and apps like SetJetters to publicize the link between film/TV and destination tourism.
Ways Columbia County can attract film production, she said, are to provide infrastructure and base camps for projects, provide financial incentives, and be proactive in finding projects. that would line up with events such as Halloweentown to infuse them with new projects and therefore visitors. . It also demands fast authorization processes.
Damis made his presentation to Rotary on September 21 at the Country Inn in Warren.