Why Independent Films Are Leaving California | Jeff Deverett

California has decided to give $750 million a year for the next five years to keep the film industry here, but one category of movies and films are left out. Our guest today is Jeff Deverett, who's an independent filmmaker and professor at San Diego State University. He's here to tell us why the tax credit matters a lot to independent filmmakers that have a budget less than a million dollars, And what's the impact of these filmmakers for California and why they are leaving the state? California, there's a reason why it's the epicenter of the film business. It's the best place in the world to shoot movies. There's no question about it. It really is. It's just got everything you need, except for these financial incentives, which breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that people like me have to look elsewhere. And because of that, I said, this is crazy. This makes no sense. I'm gonna go try to change it. I'm Siamak Kourami. Welcome to California Insider. Jeff, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. We wanna talk to you about the film industry in California. We have had some major challenges here in the state and the state is trying to keep the film industry here. You're an insider in this space. Can you tell us what you're seeing in the film space? Yeah, okay. So when you say I'm an insider, I am a filmmaker. I'm an independent filmmaker. So I make indie films. So it's not connected to the studios. To the big studios. Correct. So I self-finance them, I raise the money, I shoot the films, I get them distributed. So that's what independent filmmaking is. So that's sort of my perspective in the space. Now, I did work for a studio at one point, so I got a perspective as to what happens in the bigger side of the industry. But you said we wanna keep, California wants to keep filmmaking in the state. So that would be referring to the tax credit program. And there was recently a new version or a new iteration of it launched. Actually, it launched on July 1st, version 4.0 of California Film Commission, which was a big number. It's $750 million per year. The California government is basically giving to the film industry to incentivize filmmaking to stay in California. Most of that is going to big, big production. So 5% of it goes to what we call independent films above $10 million, with budgets above $10 million, and 5% of it goes to independent films with budgets below $10 million. But you see, in my space, when I say independent filmmaking, the California Film Commission defines independent filmmaking legally as to who owns the company. So if it's partially owned by a public company, I think they change it from 25% to 30% ownership recently. That's the definition. In the filmmaking world, like in my, basically amongst filmmakers, when we say an independent film, we're basically talking about low-budget independent filmmaking. So when people like me say indie filmmaking, we're talking about films that are made for probably less than a million dollars, all right? So our reference point is money, not necessarily ownership. Now here's the disconnect with the film tax credit program that they just put into place. It's going to serve the big-budget stuff very well, but it's not going to serve small-budget independent filmmakers like me, because most of the films I make are less than a million dollars, and the problem is is that the credit, there is no credit for films with budgets of less than a million dollars. You have to be at least a million dollars or more to even qualify for the credit. So I've been sort of, for years, trying to work on a new incentive program in California that hopefully will incentivize, will have money put aside to incentivize budgets below a million dollars, which is most filmmaking in California. I mean, most filmmakers are indie filmmakers. Now, obviously, $100 million production is going to be bigger than $100,000, $800,000 productions, but just like it is in any industry, small business drives the economy more so than big business. Now, everybody talks about big business because big business has huge market caps and employs hundreds of thousands of people and huge profits and public trading and all this kind of stuff. So big business is exciting, but most people are employed in small businesses, like restaurants and coffee shops and retail and whatever the case may be, all kinds of small businesses. So my space is small business filmmaking. It's the independent world below a million dollars. So California has not done a good job at keeping those people in California, people who are like indie filmmakers who are making films for less than a million dollars. There's no incentive at all. Why do these small filmmakers matter? Even though the big budget, Hollywood-esque, big budget films are super entertaining or can be, just because how much money they spend and the A-list actors and all that kind of stuff, I mean, they drive the industry, obviously, because that's what people want to see. But the reason low budgeting filmmaking matters is because that's sort of the breeding ground for storytellers. You're not born a big budget indie filmmaker. When you go into filmmaking generally, unless you're super well-connected and born into a legacy family, a Hollywood legacy family, generally, you're gonna start as an indie filmmaker. You're gonna start telling your stories, low-budget indie films, because that's all you can afford to do. That's where you're going. And those stories are generally very, a lot of them, okay, a lot of them aren't good, but a lot of them are really good. Albeit, they don't have huge budgets to be able to do the production value that big Hollywood films have, but those are great stories, sometimes fantastic messages if they're documentaries, or even narrative films that have really good stories. So storytelling matters, okay? And I'm gonna say that in the independent world, there's less restriction on the story you can tell because you're an independent filmmaker, so you can choose what you're gonna do. You're not subject to the whims of a studio executive who says, you need to stay in this lane because this is what our audience wants to see. Now, I'm not slamming the big studios and the streamers because they know their business well. Like, why do so many action movies, why do so many Marvel movies get made? Why? Everybody thinks the answer is is because they make money. It's because people constantly wanna see more and more of them. So the studios are in the business of providing content, the kind of content that people wanna see, and monetizing it. That's their business. Independent filmmakers, on the other hand, are really focused on storytelling. Now, sometimes their stories are interesting to audiences, and sometimes they're not. But there's no restrictions to an independent filmmaker on what story they wanna tell, whereas there would be in a Hollywood environment. That's why it matters. So you're saying, in a sense, there's more innovation in this. Much more innovation, all right? That's where the innovation is created. And often, some of the big Hollywood stuff comes from that. Like, a script will get written at an independent level, or a short film will get made, or even a feature or something like that. And it's super innovative because the filmmaker at that level, who wasn't restricted by some studio exec, got to take a chance and got to be innovative. And that's what creates new and interesting stories and innovation. What about the talent that goes into these small films? Do they end up making it to bigger studios, or is it? Some do. Some make it bigger. It's like any business, all right? Well, it's not really like medicine or law. Once you get a medical degree, you're generally gonna be able to practice medicine, okay? It's a very competitive industry. A lot of people wanna dream of being a filmmaker, right? Usually, sort of the holy grail is directing. That's what people really wanna do, is direct. I mean, I've directed five features, and directing is really, it's fun, it's creative, it's super artistic. That's what you want. If you're an artist, you wanna be a director in the film business. So if you're talented, then, and you get lucky, all right? So I'm gonna say talent matters because if you're not talented, then you're just not gonna get ahead, right? You have to have talent, all right? You have to be a good storyteller. You have to know how to craft the film. You have to know how to tell the story properly so that people are entertained by it because it's entertainment, right? But then you have to get lucky. You gotta be in the right place at the right time. Your film has to hopefully resonate with people, get well distributed. It's the whole business side of the industry, the marketing distribution side. You can make the greatest film of all time as an indie filmmaker, but if it doesn't get in front of audiences properly, nobody's gonna see it, you're not gonna be successful, unfortunately. And that's the case with a lot of indie filmmakers where they are super talented, they just don't get the break. So you never hear about them. And then once in a while, you hear about somebody because they got the break. Doesn't mean they're any more talented than the next person. Like on that note, like, you know, I used to coach hockey. I mean, every kid on my team, I had 15 players, 13 of them were fantastic. A couple of weren't just at that caliber, right? But only, you know, one out of, I don't know what the statistic is, 10 out of, I don't know, a million, couple million is gonna make it to the NHL. Only one player is gonna make it to the NBA. How many athletes go pro, even though all of them are great? I play a lot of golf and I see all these young golfers who are unbelievable. They just need to be unbelievable in that one day, making that one putt that is in the front of the right people at the right time and that takes it over the edge. So that's sometimes the difference. How about actors? We do casting calls. All these young actors come in, not even young, old, everything, come in, they're all really good. It breaks my heart to do casting because I have one role and, you know, 500 people auditioned for it and 400 of them are fantastic, but there's only one role. So one person did one thing, one way that caught my attention and it's not that the other 400 weren't great. So that's the difference sometimes between success and failure in any business. You mentioned the tax credit doesn't really apply to them in California and we know that the film industry is not doing well in general here. First of all, I think it's great that California enacted this. It's expensive for the taxpayers, me being one of them, because now it's 750 million as opposed to 330 million, but we're trying to repatriate a lot of big business, big film production back to primarily Los Angeles, you know, where it ultimately originated. And, you know, I'm going to say that LA is still the hub of filmmaking in the world. I mean, in terms of infrastructure, talent, you know, resources, all this kind of stuff. So it's too bad we let it go, you know, what we call these runaway productions that kind of left, you know, ironically, I'm formerly from Canada and most of those productions ran away to Canada, to Vancouver and Toronto, where I'm from. So we're trying to get them back, which is really, hopefully will be really good for our economy here in California and will create a lot of jobs and economic activities. That's the whole point of these programs is to do that. So it's a very good step in the right direction and I applaud, you know, the assembly for doing it. However, it does not help indie filmmakers who are making films below a million dollars because the tax credit does not kick in. There are no incentives below a million dollars. It starts at budgets with a million dollars or more. And even then it's very tricky to navigate it. So I've done tax credits in various states like films. The California one is by far the most complicated one and maybe because it's the most competitive sort of state for filmmaking. There's things called job ratios and other stuff that you have to qualify for, whereas in other programs you don't. So I don't want to get into too many details, but listen, once you understand how to navigate it, then it's okay. But low-budget indie filmmakers who are filmmakers, they don't have an accounting department, a legal department. They don't have a tax credit department. A studio will have just a tax credit department. These are experts who understand all the intricacies of applying for and managing a tax credit, whereas a low-budget indie filmmaker has no clue. They have to either hire somebody to help them out or struggle through going through the website and trying to figure it out. Is this low-budget movies, have they been impacted by what's happening with the film industry? The production is down significantly over the last few years. Less, they've been impacted less only because it's, look it, the big budget stuff gets the profile of all the news. Nobody talks about low-budget indie films. The only people talk about it are, say, film school students or indie filmmakers, right? But you wouldn't talk about it because you would never see most of these films, unless you go to a lot of festivals where they premiere or you go onto certain websites or something where they're shown. But for the most part, they're under the radar screen. So does it, you asked me before, does it matter? I think it matters because I think filmmaking's important and storytelling's important, all right? But nobody's gonna miss this stuff. If they never see one of these indie films, it's not like, oh, they heard about it and they missed it. They didn't. Every once in a while, something rises up, right? Like Anora, the Academy Award winner, would be called an indie film. But it's not a low-budget indie film. I think the budget was six million or something like that. I'm talking, you know, but less, like I'm talking film for 600,000, a 10th of that, all right? So that side of the business is not as impacted. It doesn't really matter about tax credits or not because those films get made because filmmakers find a way to make them. You know, family money, you know, grants, whatever. They figure out how to navigate the financial side to get enough money to make the film. Now, most of the films fail miserably. There's reasons for that, all right? I can go into- Why is that? Okay, here's the reasons, all right? Number one, first of all, according to some of my sort of research, and it's not perfect by any sense, all right? How many independent films do you think get made every year in the United States? And when I say films, I'm talking about feature-length films which we're gonna define as 70 minutes or longer, all right? Because a lot of short-form content being done now. How many 70-minute or longer films, not documentaries, just narrative films like stories? What would you say the number would be? Very hard. It's about 10,000. Okay, and again, the research is not definitive at all on this, all right? That's more or less what we think, all right? Of those 10,000 films, do you know how many are going to break even or make a profit? What percentage? Okay, I would say 5%. 1%. Now, I'm gonna tell you why. Here's the reason, all right? 5,000 of those films are going to be so poorly made that nobody's gonna ever wanna see them. I mean, they're shot on cell phones. There are no lighting. The sound is terrible. They're just, the production quality's bad. The story's bad. They weren't done well, all right? These are people who, filmmakers who are experimenting, who are trying to learn, you know, kinda. It's practice, all right? So nobody wants to watch a bad film. So first and foremost, if you're gonna be in the film business, you gotta make an entertaining film. That's the point, right? You gotta entertain an audience. Otherwise, you're gonna fail because nobody wants to waste their time watching a bad film, let alone pay for it. They don't wanna waste their time, all right? So 5,000 of those 10,000 films are pretty well unwatchable. So they have to be put aside, all right? Of the other 5,000 films, 4,000 of them are not going to get distributed. They're going to be well-made. They're gonna be entertaining, but they're not gonna get distribution. Why? Because the filmmaker who makes them doesn't understand the landscape of the distribution business. They say, I'll make the film and then we'll figure it out later. And they never figure it out, which is a shame. It's a real shame because there's a lot of decent films, you know, never get in front of an audience, not because they're good, not good films, because they don't know how to get distribution. They don't know how to find a distributor. They don't know how to self-distribute. They don't know how to manage that. And it's very difficult and challenging, especially if you're an artist and you're focused on just the making of the film. So now we're left with 1,000 films, right? Of those 1,000 films, 800 of them are not gonna get properly marketed. They're gonna get distributed, meaning they're gonna go onto, say, streaming platforms. So say- So they'll be on Amazon. They'll go onto Amazon or Apple or 2B or Pluto or some of these platforms, right? But if you go onto one of these platforms, there's 60 or 70,000 movies on these platforms, say, 30,000 of which are reruns of epic, huge Hollywood films. So your indie film's gonna be competing with Jurassic Park, like the first Jurassic Park, not the new one, right? Because it's in its fourth or fifth run on a streaming platform. You'll be competing against the Shawshank Redemption. You're gonna be competing against these huge, epic, unbelievably fantastic Hollywood films. So when people, viewers, go onto these streaming platforms, they're gonna go through lightning speed, scrolling through the thumbnails and looking at the graphics. They're gonna say, oh, Shawshank Redemption, I'll watch that again for the 15th time. They're not gonna see your movie because they don't recognize it. You don't have any A-list talent. It's not a big name. It didn't get a theatrical release. It's a low-budget indie film. So they're gonna bypass it. The only way for them to actually recognize it is for you to do some marketing to create attention for your film so that when they see it, they say, oh, I heard of that. So usually social media or some type of advertising, just a lot of filmmakers don't have the budget or the know-how to do marketing. They don't tuck away any funds to do marketing. So of the 1,000 films that got properly distributed, 800 did not get properly marketed, meaning they're on the streaming platforms, but nobody's gonna recognize them, hence they're gonna bypass them. So 200 got properly marketed, either through the distribution company or through the filmmaker, a combination thereof, and of those, half of them will be successful. So when, so that's 50%, so that's 100 films will be successful, but it's 50% of the films that, one, got made well, got distributed well, and got marketed well. It's 50% success rate. So the odds are very low. No, the odds are high if you do it properly. If you do it properly, the odds are better that you will succeed. It's just really hard for indie filmmakers to do it properly because, okay, making the film is hard enough. A lot of filmmakers say, you know, I say, I say making the film's the easiest part of the whole process. Like, I call it the holiday, making the film. People say, are you nuts, Jeff? Like, do you know how hard it is to make a film? And I say, what do you mean, do I know how hard it is? I've made nine features, you haven't made any. I think I know how hard it is. I've been on set many times, I've directed five, I know how hard it is. But wait till you go to distribute it and market it. Then you'll see what hard is all about. Then you'll see where the challenge is, all right? Now, in contrast, Hollywood films, you know, like studio films or, you know, Netflix or, you know, streaming films, they have departments. So one department makes the film. They're experts in production. The next department distributes the film. They're experts in releasing. Then they have a marketing department, you know? So these are people who, like the marketing people, they're not filmmakers, they're marketing experts. And distribution and salespeople to sell around the world. In contrast, an independent filmmaker has to be everything. They have to be a good filmmaker, they have to be a good distributor, a good marketer. They need to play every, wear every hat. And you can't, because you can't be an expert in everything. So that's the disconnect. That's why the success rate is so low. In terms of situation in California, are these filmmakers in California and would they continue in California or would they get subject to moving to other states? Or what are your thoughts on that? Okay, well, I can talk as one of them. I am, first and foremost, a filmmaker. So as an independent filmmaker, you wanna go where you're gonna get good value. All right, so let me tell you the priorities of an independent filmmaker. Number one is the integrity of the movie, right? You gotta make the movie that you set out to make. Like you have a vision of what you want your movie to be and you gotta make sure that it's, you know, adheres to that vision. Otherwise, if you've compromised your artistic integrity, what's the point of that, all right? So let's say your movie, you're shooting at some very unique location, like Mount Rushmore, let's say, okay, super unique. There's no other Mount Rushmores in the world. You gotta go to where the real Mount Rushmore is. So if your movie requires that, then you need to go there, all right? Now, if your movie, now, here's the thing these days, all right, with special effects and green screening and AI and all the tools now that are available to us, you can create any of that stuff anywhere. So you don't really need to go anywhere, but let's say as a director, you say, I wanna shoot with the backdrop of Mount Rushmore, so I gotta go up there, all right? But you don't really, you could shoot on a green screen and throw it in the background afterwards if you know how to do it and you can afford it, but it's actually cheaper than taking a crew up there. All right, so that kinda has disappeared, but still some people adhere to that, all right? So now you gotta say to yourself, okay, assuming I can shoot my movie pretty well anywhere, like people say, okay, California's got the best beaches. You know, I live here, it does have great beaches, but do you really need that beach? Can you maybe go and get a beach in Louisiana that could look like a California beach? I mean, do you really need the backdrop of Los Angeles or can you take any city and make it look like LA and then just do some establishing shots? So with the advent of filmmaking and the tricks and all that kinda stuff, you can more or less shoot anything anywhere these days, which means that the next priority is going to be value. Where are you gonna get the most sort of how to stretch your budget? So let's say you have a million dollar budget and you wanna get the most out of it. So you gotta look at various things. Number one is, say, the cost of labor. So some states, maybe the labor rates are lower. The minimum wage is lower, that type of thing, or the labor, or you can get, the demand for filmmaking is lower so you can get better deals, say, on equipment, on people, on locations, on food, on everything that you need. So sometimes you're gonna look at that, assuming that the locations are all good. Resources like talent and crew, okay? You don't wanna go to a place where you can't get the right crew, but for the most part, most states have. Remember, we're talking low-budget indie filmmaking. For big-budget stuff, it's different, okay? For a crew of 20 or 30 people, you can generally put a decent crew together more or less anywhere in the United States. Talent. So some, I'm gonna say that California, like LA and New York and those big cities obviously have the biggest talent bases, and you can find talent elsewhere, or you can maybe get talent and bring it from Los Angeles or that type of thing. But then it gets down to what we call financial incentives, all right? So now we say, okay, I can shoot, I'll use, I don't know, we can use any state. So, I don't know, call it Kentucky. Kentucky's got a very good tax credit program, a financial incentive program, all right? Now, people say, ah, can I really shoot in Kentucky? I mean, you go to the Kentucky Film Commission, they're gonna tell you, sure you can, and here's why, and here's our crews, and here, and they're gonna walk you through and everything like that, all right? And then they're gonna say, look at our financial incentive program. I mean, it's a rebate, I think it's 35%. And it's very, very attractive. You're a low-budget indie filmmaker. We can stretch your dollars much further here and give you back a lot more of your budget than anybody else can, than, say, New Mexico can, or New York, or any of these other programs. By the way, there's 28 or 29 of them now, states that offer these financial incentives in the United States, and it's constantly changing. It's a very competitive industry. People want the film business. Do you see people from California, like yourself, you're based in San Diego, and do you see people like yourself going to other states for the tax credit to do the movies, or would you stay here? Okay, here's the thing. I'm glad you asked me that question. Okay, I've shot in Oklahoma, where there's great financial incentive, many films in California, I mean, in Canada, where I'm from, you know, because it's very comfortable for me to go there. I've looked at Kentucky, New Mexico, Louisiana, New York. I've looked at all these states, and so the answer is yes, the incentive is enough to draw me away, except for one thing. I mean, and I'm going to say this as a true Californian. Remember, I moved to California. I grew up in Canada in winters, harsh winters and everything like that. Now I live in San Diego, which, you know, I'm going to give a plug to San Diego. I mean, you cannot beat the weather and the lifestyle in San Diego. Like, why would anybody live anywhere else in their lives? I used to say to my parents, like, why didn't you move there? Why did we live in Toronto? Why didn't you move to San Diego? So I moved to San Diego, you know, later on in life. I've been there now 16 years, and I got to say, it's a great place to live and to make films. Primarily, I mean, the filmmaking is because you got everything you need. You got the cities, the beaches, the mountains, the deserts, you got all the environments that you need to shoot in. You've got some infrastructure, albeit not as much as Los Angeles. We've got good talent down there. We've got both actors and crew people. I have a great crew that I use in San Diego. And primarily, you can't beat the weather. Like, if you are shooting outdoors or even indoors, like, you're never getting snowstorms. You're getting 300 and whatever it is, 50 days of sunshine every year, 355 days, temperate weather. I love being a Californian. I really do. There's some challenges, obviously, but everybody's got their challenges. But California, there's a reason why it's the epicenter of the film business. The weather, the infrastructure, everything. And it grew for many decades of lots of hard work and everything like that, but it's the best place in the world to shoot movies. There's no question about it. It really is. It's just got everything you need, except for these financial incentives, which breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that people like me have to look elsewhere. Like, I'm gonna leave my own backyard, which is the greatest place ever, to go elsewhere to get, say, you know, not as good a crew as I would have in my own backyard, not as good weather, not as good this, not as good that, but I'm gonna get these financial incentives, which I'm not gonna get in San Diego. That breaks my heart. And because of that, I think I told you, I said, this is crazy. This makes no sense. I'm gonna go try to change it. So two years ago, well, it started five years ago, I went to the assembly, like the state assembly in Sacramento. I mean, I didn't go there directly. I went to my assembly person in San Diego, and I said, this is nuts. I'm a filmmaker. I'm leaving San Diego. I'm taking my, say, million-dollar production, and I'm gonna take it to Oklahoma to shoot there. I'm gonna create, you know, 80 jobs there. I'm gonna spend this much money. And these people in San Diego who are not gonna get the jobs, and the reason I'm doing that is because they're gonna give me a financial incentive, and we're not. Let's try to change that. So ironically, at the time, my assembly person was Todd Gloria, who is now the mayor of San Diego. And Todd said, I love it. I said, let's do a financial incentive program for films less than a million dollars. And he said, I love it. Create it. Here's my people. Let's work together. We wrote a bill. He sponsored it. We were about to take it to the assembly. COVID hit. You know, this is 2020. And Todd said, the timing's not good. It'll never pass. Let's put it off until after COVID. So during COVID, there was an election. Todd got elected to the mayor of San Diego. He left the assembly. He became the mayor of San Diego. But he put me on to David Alvarez, who was one of the assembly people from. And David said, I love it. Let's do it. And he sponsored the bill. And in April of 2023, we went to the assembly. It's AB 1421, it was called. And it was a pilot program to create financial incentives for films with budgets of less than a million dollars. So that people like me, filmmakers like me, and all these tens of thousands of other California filmmakers could stay in California and shoot their films and get credits, tax credits like we would, or financial incentives like we would in all these other places. And it got read, it passed the first reading, and then it went to committee. The committee loved it, passed it, and then it went to the expropriations and they killed it. Because many, many hundreds of bills go to expropriations. They can't fund everything. It was just post-COVID, there was homelessness, there was housing issues, there was all kinds of stuff. So it got killed in the expropriation committee. However, it didn't get killed, period. So we're hoping that the timing is such that we can go back and relaunch it and ask for that money. Now, we did not try to tap into the California Film Commission money. Like this new recent money of $750 million per year that just got granted through the California Film Commission. That's separate, that's for big budget stuff. We went directly, it wasn't like carve some money out of that. It was like, let's carve it out of the general fund as a separate program. And we asked for $50 million over three years. So basically 16 and a half million dollars a year to try it out on a test program. So they're still considering it. I have to re-go, I have to do the process all again. We got to go in, but I'm going to do it. It's a ton of work, but it's important. It's so important for the state of California. And one of the reasons I wanted to do your show is so that we could share this with people so they understand, like if we can do this, if we can pull this off in a small level, like it's pennies compared to what they fund other programs at. Not pennies, but it's relatively small amounts relative to other programs, including the California Film Commission program. I'm going to say that tens of thousands of filmmakers will stay in California, low budget indie filmmakers. Certainly all the students that I graduate, that I teach every year, they don't need to leave. They don't need to go to New Mexico. They don't need to go to Oklahoma and Kentucky. Before we move on to the rest of this interview, let's take a look at the headlines we covered in the Epoch Times print edition this week. The state is moving forward with special elections on redistricting. This could give Democrats up to five more seats. There's going to be a special election. Governor Newsom is proposing this to actually counter what's happening in Texas. California is closing one other state prison, has 2,700 inmates in there and 1,200 employees. ICE officers in LA are barred from impersonating as local police in home arrest. This is a court decision. There is fear among the Latino community, even the ones that are citizens. They've told us that they sometimes think they have to have their passports with them because you never know, or they might get stopped. Another interesting story out of San Francisco that you may only see in our newspaper is with the World Transplant Congress meeting in San Francisco. There is a dark side to organ transplantations and there was a group in San Francisco that was exposing that. There is right now organ harvesting happening in China in labor camps and prisons of spiritual believers, people that believe in Falun Gong or Falun Dafa and Tibetan monks. Now, if you enjoy what you read, this is just the California side of the paper. There's national, international news and China news with a lot of interesting articles that you may not see anywhere else. If you want to subscribe to our paper, you can click on the link below and you'll get a deal for a dollar a week and you can let us know what you think of the paper. Now we'll go back to the interview. When we talk to businesses that have been leaving the state, a number of businesses have been leaving the state, a lot of them have been complaining about costs and regulation. For you as a small filmmaker, is it only the tax credits? If the tax credits was there, you guys, you would produce here? For me personally, yes. Okay, look it, the cost of labor in California is a little higher than in other states, but I'm okay with that. How much higher is it for you as a filmmaker? It depends on the position and, you know, by the way, I'm dealing with non-union crews. Like at that level, we're not shooting union productions. So, this is- It's not very high. The gap is not that big. It's not big enough to- To justify going out of California. It's not big enough, all right? Plus, I'm going to say, you know, certainly in San Diego, where I live, that my crew is very, very talented. You get your money's worth. I can shoot quicker. I can shoot better. You know, I'm not saying other crews aren't good. I just, you know, I'm used to my crew, right? So, they're good. They're trustworthy. They know what they're doing. So, I'm comfortable with that. Certainly the talent base, and we have a big talent base in San Diego, but we're, you know, two hours down the road from Los Angeles, and that's the biggest talent base. So, I'm going to say I would definitely, 100% stay in California, if not for the tax, not the financial incentive. The rest of this stuff wouldn't matter. How many movies have you done in California? How many outside of California? So, I've made nine movies. I only shot two in California, and seven of them outside. Now, the only reason I shot the two in California is one of them was, it was literally personal. I was shooting during the summer, and I wanted to be home, because my kids were there, and I just didn't want to travel the whole summer. So, and it cost me a lot more. It was more, I forewent, you know, a financial incentive of probably, I'm going to say net $170,000 or $180,000. I just left it off the table, because I wanted to be at home that summer. Like, when you go shoot a movie, you're away for six to eight weeks, and you miss, you know, all your family time. I have four sons. I, you know, I just didn't want to miss another summer. So, I did it for that reason. It was a financially selfish thing to do, but I did it anyways, and, you know, some of my investors are watching. They know this. It's not like a surprise. I'm a major investor in that film, and I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it in my own backyard. I also happen to be able to access lots of resources, you know, at fair prices, especially some locations. Not that I couldn't have got them elsewhere. I probably could. How much is this $170,000, $150,000 mean for a small movie producer? It means the difference between making another movie. It means the difference between having a good life. Like, you know, we're talking $170,000 for a filmmaker. That's three or four years worth of salary for them. I mean, that's a big deal, or to be able to, say, pay back their investors so that they earn the trust of their investors and start to make a profit, you know? I mean, it means a lot. We're talking, you know, 20% of their budget, or 25%, depending on where you're going. It's a big, big deal. It's a game changer, and it's enough to draw you out of the state. So you are working on this $50 million credit over three years. It's about $16 million, roughly, a year. Yeah. How many movies can this sustain? So that's a great question, all right? So I did lots and lots of modeling on this, depending on the budgets, all right? So we were modeling for budgets of less than a million dollars, all right? So we figured that the average budget is gonna be probably 650 to 700. Some will come in lower, some will come in a little bit higher. So based on that, I forget the actual number, but we can do the math very quickly. It's gonna be, you know, 100 films a year or something like that. The numbers worked out really well. I mean, I had to go through lots of scrutiny and tons and tons of spreadsheets and analysis before either assembly person would put this in front of the committee, because the numbers have to play out. I mean, there has to create the right number of jobs at the right level, all right? So they have to be kind of what we call well-paying jobs. Okay, they're not necessarily union-level paying jobs, but they're not minimum wage jobs. They're well-paying jobs. There has to be enough other economic activity to justify it. Otherwise, there's no point in talking about it. This isn't just like throwing money. Remember- It looks like more of startup jobs where you start and then you can go to other positions. That's correct. You gain experience and then you learn, you grow up. And the other thing that we had is we had this intern program where basically, you know, on every film, we were gonna take 10 new film students out of California film schools, which there's several, and give them, you know, experiences paid. It's gonna be $100 a day, which is not a lot, but nobody gets paid experiences. Most interns work for free. This was gonna be a paid internship experience. So getting everybody right out of film school onto a real working set. So there's lots and lots of important stuff in this program. You're excited about filmmaking, and why? Even though I have a law degree and a commerce degree, a finance degree, my heart is as an artist. At my core, I'm an artist, all right? When I was graduating high school, my dad said to me, what do you want to do in your life? And without hesitating, I said, I want to be a filmmaker. And he said, when you say, what do you mean a filmmaker? Do you want to be a producer or director? And I said, I don't know what's the difference. He said, a producer deals with money and law and legals and contracts and all that kind of stuff. They're the business person behind filmmaking. If you want to do that, you go to either law school or business school. A director deals with storytelling. They deal with the art of filmmaking. If you want to do that, you go to film school. So I said, I think I want to be a producer, not really even knowing what that meant. And so I went in undergrad, got a finance degree, and then I went to law school. And the minute I graduated, I had to do one year of apprenticeship, and then went right into the film industry, but I always wanted to make movies. Like, I did it for the reason to become a film producer. Now, I spent 25 years in distribution, learning how films get sold and bought and all that kind of stuff, which was super valuable, because then I learned sort of the whole industry of the film business. Because, you know, you make something, you can't sell it, then you're not going to be successful. But then when the time came, I switched gears. I owned my own company at the time, my own distribution company. Then I switched gears and I said, I'm going to do now what I really set out to do, what I really want to do, which is make movies, which is be an artist. And I love being an artist. That's why I'm so passionate about it. Now I teach, I teach at two universities, at San Diego State University and at UCLA Extension. I teach filmmaking and I teach the business of the film business. You know, some of the courses I teach, I think would be, most of them, they're all in the film school. I think a lot would be maybe more suited to the business school students, because talking about finance and distribution and some of those subjects. But yeah, I'm super passionate about the film industry. I've always been that way. Like, I'm not sure why. Some people in the film industry, we call it, you know, you got the bug. You got that, you got that bug. And when you get it, it drives you. So I've had the bug my whole life. Some people are saying that a lot of the movies, unfortunately, don't elevate the values of the society. How much of this movie business is about the business? How much of it is about the impact that you have on the audience? Okay, so audience impact, let's call it, there's two components to audience impact. One is entertainment. Is an audience entertained? Like, people are still human. You still need to be entertained. You need to be moved. You need to be scared by a horror film. You need to be moved emotionally by a drama. You need to laugh by a comedy. You need to cry. I mean, those are human emotions. That's what storytelling's all about, is evoking emotions in people, right? Making them feel up, down, you know, and that's number one. Number two is sharing a message, an important message with the world, or a story, all right? So, you know, people want to be, say, inspired by great stories, or they want to understand what's going on in different cultures or with different people in their lives. So that's what storytelling is. It's, you know, toying with people's emotions and telling them a great story and inspiring them. So, that kind of stuff matters, and, you know, like when you say, does anybody care or anything like that? Are we human still? I mean, I'm going to ask you, like, AI is crazy, AI is going to change a lot of things, but is it going to take our humanity from us? Are we still, are we going to lose the need to be entertained, to be moved, to be emotionally, you know, like to cry and to laugh and to do this kind of stuff? If we are, the world's going to be a different place, right? But right now, that still hasn't happened. Right now, I still believe that being able to, like, make a film that shares something with somebody and moves them and helps them learn something, or, you know, just inspires them or scares them or whatever it does, just enhances their life, and that's what matters. It just enhances the human condition and makes people feel. Jeff Deverett, filmmaker and professor at San Diego State and UCLA Extension. It was great to have you on California Insider. Thank you very much, appreciate you having me here. Let us know what your thoughts are on independent filmmakers with low budgets. Do you think California's tax credit plan should extend to help these moviemakers? You can always email or comment. Email us at ciamacacaliforniansider.com, we'll read all of your emails and comments. This is Siamak Karami with California Insider, we'll see you next time.