By Stephanie Riegel

When Warner Bros. began production of its big-budget western Jonah Hex last year, film crews shot several scenes at locations in West Feliciana Parish before heading to New Orleans to shoot against the backdrop of historic Gallier Hall.

Earlier this spring, production crews for World Wrestling Entertainment’s Brother’s Keeper were bouncing back and forth between Hammond, Kenner, LaPlace and New Orleans, shooting at various locations that will pass for the Oklahoma town that is the setting for the high school wrestling flick.

They’re just two examples of what is, perhaps, the single most significant aspect of the state’s nearly decade-old movie industry program: It is fostering economic cooperation and collaboration among the state’s often divided cities and regions, bringing them together to grow what is becoming a phenomenally successful industry for Louisiana in general and the corridor in particular.

“I think that’s what everyone is finally beginning to realize,” says Rep. Cameron Henry, R-Jefferson. “Movies don’t just film in one spot. They utilize the entire state, and if you allow them to produce a good product—which they’ve been able to do here—and you get out of their way, we’ll all succeed.”

Henry should know. He was instrumental last year in helping pass legislation that locked in at 30% and made permanent the tax credits that movie producers get for filming in Louisiana. That program, known as Hollywood South when it was initiated in 2002, has far exceeded expectations. In the eight years since it went into effect, more than $400 million in tax incentives have been awarded and production expenditures have exceeded $2 billion, including $200 million in payroll tax.

“We’ve built up a measure of credibility, stability and reliability thru the years,” says Chris Stelly of the state’s Office of Entertainment Industry Development. “The producers know when they come here they can get a wealth of services and infrastructure.”

Wealth of services and infrastructure might be something of an overstatement. But Louisiana is gradually growing an industry to support the actual production of entire movies and TV shows. Whereas it was once an exotic locale from which to inexpensively shoot bayou or plantation scenes, producers now have a choice of sound stages where they can shoot indoor scenes, experienced crews they can hire as grips, technicians, makeup artists or audio engineers, and firms from which they can rent equipment, vehicles and just about anything else they might need.

Baton Rouge-based Hollywood Trucks is one such example. The company, which runs an entertainment transportation fleet, was founded in the fall of 2007. In the two and a half years since, it has grown from having seven vehicles to 250, including passenger vans, star trailers and mobile generators. Last year’s annual revenues were in the $5 million range, up from $1.3 million the year before.

“I never imagined the industry would grow this much and that we would do this well,” says Hollywood Trucks’ Andre Champagne, 33, whose company leases space at the Celtic Media Centre in Baton Rouge. “It has really exceeded everyone’s expectations.”

The presence of a trained workforce and supportive infrastructure is considered the main reason Louisiana has maintained its competitive edge against other states that have copied its tax incentive program and tried to mimic its success. In 2008, the state ranked third behind California and New York in terms of film production, outshining states that offer tax credits as generous as 40% but lack the film crews or sound stages to support the work.

Currently, Louisiana has more than 20 sound stages, most of which are clustered around the biggest cities, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport and Lafayette. Employment data is not easy to come by because so many jobs in the industry are temporary. But union rolls for workers in the industry have grown from around 100 in 2002 to nearly 1,000 today, and payroll taxes generated by the industry topped $103 million last year, up from $99 million in 2008 and $76 million in 2007.

While the industry has created new job opportunities and new companies like Hollywood Trucks, it has also generated work for existing businesses that really never gave much thought to the movie industry until it came calling, as it did last winter on a Lafayette-area pressure-washing company called Exterior Cleaning Service.

Disney was in the area filming Secretariat and had dirtied some barns at the Evangeline Training Center by applying a substance to their roofs that darkened and aged them. Once filming was complete, Disney had to clean the barns and had little time to spare, as a group of thoroughbreds was on its way down to the facility from up north. The producers called Exterior’s owner Chris LeBas and asked him if he could restore the barns in a matter of days.

“They were very quick and professional and up-front about everything,” says LeBas. “It was a great experience to work for them.”

Though not an altogether easy one. The day LeBas tested his cleaning solvent on the barn roofs, the aging material came off easily. A few days later when the actual work was to begin, however, it was freezing and sleeting—and the chemical wasn’t as effective in the cold, wet conditions. It took twice as long as anticipated to scrub the barns clean, which threw off LeBas’ price quote considerably.

“I told them we had to renegotiate and they didn’t care at all,” he says. “It was an $8,000 or $9,000 job, and that’s a really big deal for me. That’s when it dawned on me that no one ever talks about the ripple effect this industry is having on the entire economy of our state.”

Actually, economists do talk about it, though usually only in more holistic terms. They estimate, for instance, that the total economic impact of the industry on the state exceeds $2 billion, and that number is expected to grow.

“Our industry is growing at a rate of between 20% and 22% a year in terms of job creation, which is astounding,” says Stelly. “In that respect, we’re outpacing anything else in the state as far as jobs being created.”

For the corridor, the industry has been particularly lucrative. Of the four biggest cities in the state and, by extension, the natural location for movie producers to come, only Shreveport is outside the 10/12 corridor. It saw its biggest share of the industry in the months immediately following Katrina, when the bulk of the projects then under way in New Orleans immediately relocated there.

In the past two years, however, New Orleans has regained its position as the biggest player in the state’s film industry. Baton Rouge and Shreveport vie for second and third, while Lafayette is in fourth.

“Baton Rouge and Lafayette tend to get steady work from the smaller production houses,” notes Stelly. “But there are some exceptions—Baton Rouge housed Battle: Los Angeles and Lafayette did Secretariat and those were two of the biggest movies made in the state last year.”

Industry experts say the entire corridor is appealing as a location for movie producers, not least because of the diverse landscapes that are available in relatively close proximity to one another. For West Coast producers accustomed to hours-long commutes across sprawling metro Los Angeles, a drive from New Orleans to Lafayette is a mere jaunt. Yet within that area, a location scout can find cityscapes, picturesque small towns, rolling farm country, historic plantation homes, a variety of waterways and enough nondescript strip malls to pass for Anywhere USA.

“These movies will be filming in the French Quarter for one scene and then they’ll shoot in Cameron Parish and then they’ll go up to Shreveport,” says legislator Henry.

That fact alone is arguably the single greatest contribution of this growing industry. In a state that has talked the talk of regional economic development for decades but never taken more than a few baby steps, the entertainment industry—merely by virtue of the way it does business—has forced the state to think of itself as a whole in terms of what it has to offer. True, each city has its own film commission that each does its own thing, but more and more they’re working together, realizing that a rising tide lifts all boats.

“This isn’t an industry that is stationed in New Orleans or St. Tammany or Baton Rouge,” says Henry. “It’s fluid and goes where it needs to go and I think that is what helped me and my colleagues sell this tax credit program to others in the Legislature who were maybe a little bit wary of it.”

As they look to the future, Henry and other state officials would like to use the success of the entertainment industry as a model for other industries that could be incentivized to come to the state and stay. Already, there are three programs that are spin offs of the movie industry tax credit program—one for music production, one for live production or theater, and one for digital animation like video games.

That’s a good start, lawmakers say. But Henry would like to find a totally unrelated type of industry the state could bring here through tax credits and grow, particularly in the resource-rich corridor region.

“If we can identify an industry that the state can kind of gather around and say, ‘Alright we’re going to go after this and push it because it will benefit the whole state,’ that’s what we need to do,” he says. “Because we have an example now that we can follow.”

How active is the film industry in Louisiana this year? Click here for a list of productions being shot or prepared for shooting in the state as of the end of March.