‘Walking Dead’ demonstrates impact of film industry
SENOIA – Not much can be seen from outside the rusted steel curtain that walls off the fictional town of Alexandria.
But that didn’t matter to Jenny Williams, who traveled from Dade City, near Tampa, with her husband Ronnie to visit this small town about an hour south of Atlanta.
Seeing the wall, which is meant to protect The Walking Dead characters from zombies as well as keep the popular AMC show’s fans at bay, brought tears to her eyes.
“I was all like, ‘It’s Alexandria! The wall!’ she said. “I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.’
“This is what I’ve been watching and obsessing over for years, and I’m seeing it in real life now, and it’s just really cool,” she said as she stood outside the wall on a recent weekday afternoon.
The couple, who came to Senoia as a birthday treat for Jenny, are among the many people from all over the world who make the trip to a small Southern town whose identity has become intertwined with a post-apocalyptic zombie outbreak.
The restaurant menus here include items referencing the show. Zombie hunting permits can be acquired at the welcome center. There’s also a Walking Dead café and a museum with props from the show. Some shops incorporate zombie references where they can.
“It brings around more people here,” said Wayne Peavy, who owns FoxxHollow Antiques and Uniques. “Of course, we’re doing better business here, but everybody who comes, they come for one thing: to see the Walking Dead things.”
So that’s why white angel wings aren’t simply called angel wings in his store. They’re Daryl’s wings, a reference to a character whose black leather vest features a pair of wings on the back.
‘Lightning could strike’
The Walking Dead, which will enter its eighth season this fall, is largely credited with spurring the revitalization of Senoia’s downtown, although locals argue it shouldn’t get all the credit.
Boutiques, antique stores and restaurants line the main drag that doubled as Woodbury – another key setting for the show – in an earlier season.
The town is home to about 4,000 people and Raleigh Studios Atlanta, which was originally built here in the 1980s and is where the Walking Dead is also based. Senoia’s slogan is “The perfect setting. For life.”
Senoia is also perhaps the state’s most visible example of how the film industry – lured to Georgia more than a decade ago by a tax credit program that costs the state hundreds of millions of dollars – can economically lift a community.
There’s also Covington, where fans of the Vampire Diaries flock to see where that show was filmed.
The industry had a statewide economic impact of more than $7 billion during the 2016 fiscal year, state officials announced last fall. The 245 feature film and TV productions shot in Georgia, they said, represent about $2 billion in direct spending in the state.
The state is also now the top spot for feature films in the world, according to a recent report.
That has all come at a cost, though. The tax credit program is expected to cost the state $376 million this year, according to a Georgia State University report. Next year, the cost is expected to exceed $400 million.
Lawmakers expanded the program earlier this year to include post-production work, including for films that are not shot in Georgia. The legislature also created a program that seeks to use tax credits to cultivate the music industry in Georgia.
Both of those measures included an extra 5 percent tax break for work done in the rural areas of the state, as lawmakers try to encourage the entertainment industry to spread out beyond the urban centers. That perk doesn’t apply to filming.
Beyond Senoia and Covington, the direct impact of the film industry on small and midsize communities in Georgia appears limited. The state Department of Economic Development, for its part, only tracks the state-level impact.
What’s clear, though, is that many of the state’s smaller communities, such as Cook County in south Georgia, have not seen firsthand the glitz and glamor of the film industry, or the local economic perks.
Cook County was, however, the location for an independent film with about a $10,000 budget. Such small projects are a possible secondary effect of a booming film industry that other small communities have also seen, but it’s not exactly the multi-million dollar projects gravitating toward metro Atlanta and Savannah.
Jerry Connell, who is president and CEO of the Adel-Cook County Chamber of Commerce, says he believes it will take a “super human effort” to lure film companies away from those production hubs.
But Connell said that does not stop the community from trying.
After all, it happened to Monticello, where much of My Cousin Vinny was filmed. Tiny Juliette also got a taste of the action with Fried Green Tomatoes, and people still travel there for a bite of the fried delicacy at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Senoia also has a film history going back to 1989, when scenes for Driving Miss Daisy were shot there.
“Lightning could strike,” Connell said.
Best ‘film-foot’ forward
So Cook County, which is home to about 17,000 people, promotes what it has to offer – vast farmland, a swamp known as No Man’s Land and rolling hills covered with pine and oak trees – through a state program called Camera Ready Communities.
The program, which started about a decade ago, provides even the state’s smallest communities a venue for promoting potential film sites. It also trains local film liaisons, such as Connell. All 159 of the state’s counties now participate.
The state’s film office has so far accumulated more than 6,500 potential sites in a private database its staff maintains. Those properties include public and private locations as varied as Tallulah Gorge in north Georgia, a training center for first responders in middle Georgia and old plantations in south Georgia.
Craig Dominey, the program’s manager, tries to match those locations in the database with the needs of the screenplays arriving at his office every day.
“Since we get so many requests, these are storylines that are set all over the world,” Dominey said. “Sometimes they’re looking for southern locations. Other times they’re looking to double Georgia as another state or country or planet.”
Scott Tigchelaar, who co-owns Raleigh Studios Atlanta in Senoia, points to Bridges of Madison County as an example of a rural town – this one, in Iowa – snagging a major hit film because of something special it had to offer: covered bridges.
The more film and TV work that flows into the state, Tigchelaar said, the more likely it is that smaller communities in Georgia will land their own hit.
“There are some places that may never get a film, but the odds are greater the more film work that goes on in this state that they will,” he added.
The state’s Camera Ready Community program at least allows communities to put their “best film-foot forward,” Tigchelaar said. It’s also important for communities to be “film friendly,” he said, and that means, in part, not charging hefty fees for film permits.
Even if the majority of the work stays in Atlanta and Savannah, Tigchelaar argues the industry still benefits all communities in Georgia because the productions pump more revenue into the state’s coffers.
“If high tide floats everybody’s boat, the better off Georgia is, the better off we all are no matter where we are in Georgia,” he said.
‘No clear evidence’
It’s unclear, though, whether the benefits are worth the revenues that the state foregoes to attract an incentive-focused film industry, said Wesley Tharpe, research director with the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.
“There’s no firm, objective review and evaluation process Georgia has for looking at tax breaks in a rigorous way,” Tharpe said.
“And as a result, we have no clear evidence that the film tax credits – or any business tax breaks – deliver Georgia or rural communities as a whole a good return on investment,” he added.
The Pew Charitable Trusts found that Georgia is one of 23 states that have not done enough to evaluate the effectiveness of such tax incentives.
“The state has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in film tax credits but has not rigorously studied the results of the program,” according to the report, which was released last month.
As for local impact, Dominey pointed to “Zombieland,” a major production that shot a key scene at Valdosta’s Wild Adventures Theme Park, as an example of how film companies can boost a local economy when they are in town.
When the film production was in Valdosta, the company leased a vacant warehouse. They also hired locals as extras and spent money on hotels, food, gas, construction materials and other goods.
Local film liaisons, Dominey said, are encouraged to point film companies toward local businesses, such as antique shops and lumber stores, to maximize the impact.
But even smaller productions, such as commercials, music videos and docuseries, can provide a boost, he said.
“These are shows that are a little more nimble and can go wherever they want, but it still can be a significant impact for a community, even if they don’t qualify for the tax credit,” Dominey said.
‘What benefit is that to us?’
Dominey said he’s seeing the film work begin to spread across the state, which he said is the goal of the Camera Ready Community program. His office has worked with local counties to ramp up their contributions to the database of potential filming locations.
“The film industry was still kind of a strange, nebulous thing (a few years ago),” he said. “Now, even if you aren’t actually seeing filming, you’re reading the news stories about filming happening here and it’s making sense.
“I think more and more people want to have this in their area,” he said.
Savannah also offers its own local tax incentives on top of the 30 percent tax break that the state offers for productions that spend more than $500,000 and include the Georgia logo on the finished product.
Areas such as Thomas County, which has about 45,000 residents, are approaching the industry with a bit more tempered enthusiasm.
Bonnie Hayes, tourism director with the Thomasville Visitors Center, located in Thomas County, said local officials have already been asked whether they would offer such incentives.
A major feature film called “38,” which is a crime thriller set in St. Louis that will star Terrence Howard, will be filmed in the South Georgia town.
“We felt like we didn’t have the need for it yet,” said Hayes, who is the local film liaison. “This is just one film, and we weren’t sure how we were going to feel about being a filming location.
“We wanted to see how the production went and if this was a good fit for us before we start looking at incentives,” she added.
In the meantime, Hayes said city officials see a new independent film called “Celeste” as a chance to try out the film industry on a much smaller scale.
It’s important, Hayes said, to gauge the local economic impact of the film industry, as well as the community’s level of support for an industry that will likely require road closures and other temporary disruptions.
“If they’re just going to come in and bring in their own workers, stay here for a month’s time and then go back, what benefit is that to us?” she asked.
Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.