English1020classblog’s Weblog

Hollywood comes to Michigan

Many years ago movies were made one after another in the state of Michigan. In the United state in 2007 more than six hundred movies were made here, and of those movies only two were filmed here in Michigan.  What happened? Well the majority of movies are being filmed in the Unites States are filmed primarily in California and New York. Recently I have read about Michigan giving incentives and tax breaks to attract filmmakers to come to Michigan and in recent news, governor Granholm signed a whole package of incentive bills designed to attract filmmakers to our state. The package includes a forty percent cash rebate on Michigan expenditures along with a threshold of fifty thousand dollars to the filmmakers. This bill has been in the makings to be approved for the last five years and is finally complete. This is great news for Michigan. The filmmakers will now be spending money on hotels, car rentals, restaurants, and will be hiring. Yes! Crews will be needed to build sets and many jobs will need to be filled such as , make-up artists, carpenters, actors, electricians, assistant managers  and lots of extras will be needed to be cast in the films production. The list goes on for the amount of jobs needed to complete a movie in the makings.  It’s like a ripple affect and now that Hollywood is here in Michigan all the businesses in the areas will be hit with more revenue.  A film is going to be shot this may in Ann Arbor, and Detroit Michigan called “Youth in Revolt”. This film includes the actor from “Super Bad” and “Juno”, Michael Cera. Online right now they are accepting applications for people to help with the whole production set for this movie. I’m really interested in all this film stuff because my dream is to become an actress. I‘ve thought a lot about moving to LA. Or New York, the truth is I need to finish school and those states are extremely expensive. But now that this is happening I feel like why move to Hollywood when Hollywood is coming to me? This couldn’t have came to Michigan at a better time with the economy being in the dumps for quit some time. I know this isn’t going to dramatically boost up Michigan’s economy but every little bit helps, and it’s a step closer to making Michigan the competitive state it used to be. Keeping young intelligent minds in our state, and making up for jobs in the automotive industry is a productive move from the Michigan officials .Some will disagree with this act in giving the film makers incentives to come here when they are already going to be profiting a lot from the films profits. To that I say, there is completely nothing wrong with bringing an innovative industry to our state that is already in an economic crisis. So when your watching the big screen look out for your neighborhood, it just might be in the next movie you watch.

-Yolanda Mendoza