By GARY PERILLOUX
Advocate business writer
Published: Apr 15, 2008
 

“Warbirds,” a film shot near St. Francisville and at the Celtic Media Centre in Baton Rouge, will debut Saturday on the SCI FI cable TV channel, with a red-carpet premiere set at Celtic the same day. The invitation-only premiere will be open to participants at the Red Stick Animation Festival, also under way this weekend, the film’s producer, Jason Hewitt, said.
	PHOTO PROVIDED BY FILMS IN MOTION ‘Warbirds,’ a science-fiction movie filmed in West Feliciana and East Baton Rouge parishes in 2007, stars Brian Krause, left, Jamie Elle Mann and Baton Rouge natives Caleb Michaelson and Shauna Rappold.

Kevin Gendreau, the Los Angeles-based writer-director of “Warbirds,” contacted Hewitt about producing the $1.5 million project in Louisiana in conjunction with a SCI FI channel deal.

“It was really the (state tax credit) incentives that enabled them to make the film in Louisiana,” Hewitt said of a project that had been in development for two years before being shot last year.

“Once Kevin closed the deal with the SCI FI channel, things went very quickly; it was a matter of weeks.”

Though some of the movie relies on computer-generated animation, Hewitt and Gendreau needed a real-world location in Louisiana to mimic the look of a South Pacific island, something Hewitt feared would be a steep challenge. He sought help from Matt Dolney, the location scout for Hewitt’s Baton Rouge-based Films In Motion company.

“I said, ‘Matt, I’ve got a hard one for you: I need the South Pacific,’ ” Hewitt recalled. “Matt actually lives in St. Francisville and he said, ‘I know exactly where you need to shoot.’ ”

The Bayou Sara area near St. Francisville., augmented by a bit of surplus tropical shrubbery, became the setting.

The movie will debut at 8 p.m. Saturday on the SCI FI channel (Cox cable channel 59). The premiere at Celtic Media Centre will begin at 7 p.m., Hewitt said. A sneak preview of Films In Motion’s next project, “The Abduction of Jessie Bookman,” will follow “Warbirds.”

The “Warbirds” plot follows the World War II journey of Women Airforce Service Pilots, who are forced down by severe weather onto a seemingly deserted Pacific island while ferrying a top-secret weapon to an American air base. First, Japanese soldiers emerge, then pterodons — a type of flying dinosaur — appear via animation created by another Louisiana company, Planet Clockwork.

The movie will air at least 10 times on SCI FI while worldwide distribution is under way through Voltage Pictures for theatrical, TV and DVD release overseas, Hewitt said. After a long development period, “Warbirds” was filmed in just 15 days after 30 days of pre-production, he said.

At Celtic, a 22-foot high-definition projector will bring the movie to the premiere audience in the center’s screening room, which seats 70 with room for about 30 more, Hewitt said. Members of the cast and crew will attend.

Films In Motion, which is based at Celtic, plans to produce four movies a year. And Hewitt said he’s already looking at doing some productions in Michigan, which recently introduced the nation’s most aggressive film credit incentives worth up to 40 percent of a project. The Louisiana norm is 25 percent.

“I’m going to open up an office in Michigan: That’s one of my top priorities,” he said. “You can’t pass up what 40 percent rebates will do. It’s just the math: It’s too easy. … But Louisiana has a couple of things going for it. One, it’s got a pretty well-developed crew base for making films. So it’s got a decent labor market. And now, with Celtic, you really have first-class studio facilities.”

The infrastructure is critical to the long-term viability of Louisiana’s movie industry, he said, because Vancouver in Canada has survived stronger incentives from other locales and a declining currency advantage simply because it developed such a strong infrastructure for films and TV series.

“They’ve got all the tools you need, and that’s how Louisiana is going to continue to stay competitive is to put all the tools in place you need to make a movie,” Hewitt said.