Thursday, Oct. 12, 2000 | 11:09 a.m.
Fifteen years ago pioneers from the Los Angeles film industry slipped north to Canada for the first time, risking big screen shoots on sound stages staffed by unproven but eager production crews.
Hollywood critics laughed then, but today, as L.A. production costs soar and Canada establishes itself as a world-class alternative for the industry, would-be studios and production crews throughout the Southwest are scrambling to divert the job opportunities and cash flow of the silver screen to their hometowns.
Las Vegas is one of those competing towns, having secured $80 million in television and film contracts alone last year. And UNLV is making a bid to supply the small but growing neighborhood of local film industry businesses with homegrown production workers.
"Entertainment has always been a cornerstone of the Las Vegas experience, but the city has not been in a position to take full advantage of the lucrative film and television business that already exists here," UNLV President Carol Harter said. "In other cities, major universities such as UCLA, USC and NYU have capitalized on this industry."
In its third year, the 16-week, 128-hour program introduces about 15 students a semester to the mechanics of the craft, preparing them for internships with local television and video production companies. This year the program's popularity has left 30 students on a waiting list.
"What has to happen, if we're going to have serious production in town -- we need to develop a crew base," Francisco Menendez, chairman of the UNLV Department of Film, said. "Historically, we've had a lot of offers in this valley to make movies and bring production to the state, but it's been several individuals without community support."
UNLV is partnering with Entertainment Development Corp., a nonprofit marketing organization out of Green Valley, and Citibank/Citigroup. The bank has funded the program to the tune of $45,000 over three years, in part from grant money that provides scholarships to former welfare recipients. Last year the program graduated seven such students, Barbara Mulholland, vice president of public relations at Citibank/Citigroup, said.
Not everyone in the local film industry agrees that thin ranks are the most significant barrier to bringing new contracts for big budget films, television shows and national commercials to Southern Nevada.
And when Hollywood comes to town, local workers most often get the secondary jobs, according to Dennis Burke, president of the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees Local 720, which also represents motion picture stagehands. The local's 1,300 union workers and another 3,700 nonunion workers in Las Vegas have to compete to stay busy and much of the jobs aren't in the film industry, but in conventions.
"If you're expecting to make a living at it, it's not going to happen in Las Vegas," he said. "In L.A., the studios are going full bore, but here, you get a week, maybe two, but the longest production is about six weeks. It's glamorous to some, but when you get right down to it, it's hard work."
Temma Pentecost-Keatan, who with her partner Phyllis Cesare-Taie, expects to open the first Las Vegas sound stage equipped to Hollywood standards this November, agrees that "book-learning" is only a small part of the package and that Hollywood brings many of its own staff. But she agrees with Harter and Menendez that more trained workers will help the local film industry. She also says production workers can make a living locally, and sees the convention work as a bonus.
As for the critics who have grown accustomed in recent years to the announcement of a new film studio and the subsequent flop, she mentions two contracts booked for 2001 on her as-yet unbuilt stage -- a television series and a feature film starring Whoopi Goldberg and Danny DeVito.
Her Procyon Avenue studio, which already has its scenic and paint department up and running, is surrounded by other new industry businesses. Century Productions opened a state-of-the-art editing facility across the street a year ago. Cinema Services and Encore Productions, two suppliers of stage rigging and lighting structures, are around the corner.
"It's not going to happen overnight," Pentecost-Keatan said, "But hopefully in the next six months more and more locals will be working."
Trudi Ashworth, director of industry relations at Entertainment Development Corp., will be facilitating that transition, bringing together "the big egos of Hollywood and the big egos of gaming."
The film production crews in Las Vegas can handle only one major feature film at a time, Ashworth said. Places like Vancouver, with a federally subsidized work force, handle as many as seven productions at a time.
But Ashworth sees that changing as the local work force and local facilities grow and perceptions change about what is possible to film in Las Vegas.
"Pay It Forward," which opens this weekend and stars Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt, is a case in point.
"It was the first film we were able to bring here that wasn't about Las Vegas," she said.
"If you don't require an ocean, and you don't require a lot of snow, not the Swiss Alps, we have mountains, a lake, desert. Production cares about the bottom line."
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