The seismic economic impact the film and TV industry is having on the state of Georgia is undeniable, said Craig Dominey, Camera Ready program manager and senior film location specialist with the Georgia Film, Music, and Digital Entertainment Office when he spoke at the Newnan History Center and Historic Depot Tuesday night.
Just look at all the funny yellow signs dotting the landscape, he said.
“That’s kind of a visual sign that the film industry is booming here,” said Dominey. Films like “Fast and Furious 8” and “The Hunger Games” never use the actual names of the films on the directional signs for crew and extras, but “people always seem to find out, anyway,” he said.
There have been 248 film and television productions in Georgia since the office began counting them, with a total economic impact of over $6 billion. Most of that impact has come within the past decade.
Senoia has been intimately involved in Georgia’s film business from the very beginning, with Riverwood (now Raleigh) studios attracting such early productions as “Fried Green Tomatoes” and “Pet Sematary II.”
“I remember it used to be nothing but pine trees, taking film productions on the drive down to Senoia,” said Dominey at Wednesday’s “Reel Past” event, sponsored by the Georgia Humanities Council, the Newnan-Coweta Historical Society, and the Senoia Area Historical Society. “It’s a lot different now.”
The Walking Dead spends about $60 million per year on production, Dominey said. “Half of this is on goods and services,” he said. “Half of the payroll is in turn spent on goods and services, rents, etc.”
In 2007, there were only five or six businesses in Senoia. Now there are over 50. The number of restaurants has grown from one to seven.
“There’s a 100 percent occupancy rate,” said Dominey. “There’s been $50 million in new / historic looking infill development in Senoia, creating hundreds of jobs.”
People have also been buying up old historic properties and fixing them up, increasing local property values, he said.
The bus tours alone have generated $550,768 in total ticket sales since May, 2013, Dominey said. Since then, nearly 10,000 people have visited Senoia to investigate the Walking Dead fictional towns of “Woodbury” and “Alexandria.” They have directly spent over a quarter of a million dollars there, he said.
The 30 percent tax credit has been huge for the state as a whole, too, he said, as film and TV companies have generated an estimated $1.7 billion in direct expenditures here. That goes for things like lodging, car rentals, catering, office equipment and other purchases, rentals, gasoline, security, etc.
It’s also been a great promotional tour for the state of Georgia as the Georgia peach symbol is now prominently features in the credits of so many films.
“Even years later, we get calls from people wanting to find these film locations,” Dominey said. “We still get calls about ‘Fried Green Tomaotes.’”
New studios are building in the Atlanta area all the time, now including Pinewood Studios, Third Rail, the Film Factory, Screen Gems, Tyler Perry Studios and many others.
According to the Motion Picture Association of America, the TV and movie industry is responsible for more than 79,100 jobs and $4 billion in total wages in Georgia.
“These are high quality jobs, with an average salary of nearly $84,000, which is 74 percent higher than the average salary nationwide,” said Dominey.
You can be a part of it. Not only can you become an extra in one of these productions, but you can put your home or business into a database of possible filming locations, he said.
“Contact your local Camera Ready office,” he said. The local liaison is Tray Baggarly, with the Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“You can also use the photo submission on our website, Georgia.org/fmde,” he said. “Look for ‘Submit Your Property.’”
Dominey talked about a special online directory service his office offers for film industry workers and businesses.
“Our office has started this service called Reel Crew, which is an online crew database and also a vendor database thast people can list their information in,” Dominey said.
This is an industry standard, searchable, online directory of crew and support services, offered at no charge.
This online service also has an app for film industry companies to use, he said.
“Our clients, if they are looking for a location manager or a camera person or a caterer, or whoever, it might be they can look in this app and they can pull these folks up pretty quickly,” he said.
“Fried Green Money: Film & TV in Georgia” was the concluding program for the Georgia Humanities Council-funded series, “The Reel Past,” sponsored by the Newnan-Coweta Historical Society.
The event, which featured light hors d’oeuvres with a “Fried Green Tomatoes” menu theme, was a joint effort with Senoia Area Historical Society, made possible with a grant from Georgia Humanities.
A new exhibit featuring costumes from the new Michael Keaton film “The Founder” was also be on display at the Depot that evening. The film, about McDonald’s restaurant founder Ray Kroc, was made partially in the parking lot between the Depot and Thriftown, with a full-scale reproduction of the original McDonald’s in San Bernardino, Calif.
Dominey is the creator and manager of the State of Georgia’s Camera Ready Program, a groundbreaking initiative enabling county representatives to promote their unique shooting locations and other production assets directly to film and television producers. Dominey oversees a network of 159 Georgia counties, manages the state’s location photo database, and trains Camera Ready county liaisons on how to work with the entertainment industry.
He also serves as the senior film location specialist for the Georgia Film, Music and Digital Entertainment Office. For more than 14 years, his primary job has been to promote the state to production companies as a shooting location for feature films, television shows and other media productions. He scouts and photographs a wide variety of shooting locations throughout Georgia based on the scene requirements of a particular screenplay.
He is the founder and producer of The Moonlit Road.com, a Southern storytelling website, podcast and radio show recently broadcast on SiriusXM Satellite Radio.
Dominey graduated from Wake Forest University with a degree in Speech Communication – Radio/TV/Film. He has served on the board of directors of Atlanta Film Festival 365, a media arts center devoted to independent film, and worked as a scriptwriter for numerous commercials and corporate videos. He has also served as a contributing writer for regional websites, magazines and newspapers.
