Even as Gov. Dannel P. Malloy cuts financial support for film and digital-media industry training, the University of Connecticut is quietly ramping up a digital media center to be based at UConn Stamford.
The school has already enrolled about 20 students in a class that it hopes will serve as a springboard to creating a full-fledged certificate program in arts and entertainment management at UConn Stamford and other campuses.
The effort arrives as legislators continue to debate the merits of Connecticut”™s 30-percent tax credit for film and media production expenses, which has had major successes in drawing the likes of animator Blue Sky Studios to Greenwich and multiple NBC talk shows to downtown Stamford.
The producers of the TBS sitcom “Are We There Yet” are among the latest to take advantage of the incentive, filming the show at the Connecticut Film Center in Stamford. The show is derived from a 1995 film of the same name. It was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, which was an early proponent of tax credits to draw film productions.
In many cases, producers sell those tax credits up front at as discount to raise immediate capital for production ”“ providing immediate jobs and, some argue, community pride.
UConn is hoping to ready students for work in advanced productions such as the blockbuster, digitally animated movie “Avatar,” according to Karla Fox, a business professor at UConn.
“The type of (digital) visualization we”™re talking about at UConn not only extends beyond film and dramatic arts, but also has tremendous possibilities in medical visualization as well as geological visualization ”“ for example, substrata,” Fox said last month in testimony to the Connecticut General Assembly. “We are going to be a focal point for that in terms of our research and visualization augmentation activities.”
Fox said UConn chose Stamford for the initial site for the center due in part to the success of the state”™s film tax credits in drawing productions; and to the presence of the EdgeLab supported by Fairfield-based General Electric Co.
“I think it”™s clear that a number of businesses that are moving into Fairfield County, including the digital media ones, are coming in because of these tax incentives,” Fox said. “I think that has helped tremendously with the visualization (industry), such as Blue Sky.”
Even as developers work to build Stamford”™s industry profile, however, Connecticut is stripping $250,000 in funds to support movie industry training programs; and the tax credits themselves have routinely drawn criticism in the Connecticut General Assembly as amounting to a giveaway.
The same debate is playing out nationally as states look to dig their way out of budget deficits.
“I think there”™s a lot of comments and questions about the film tax credit and whether it”™s working or not,” said Rep. Roberta Willis, who represents portions of Litchfield County. “My concern has been that we started it; businesses have come in. And one of the things that businesses criticize Connecticut for is, we change the rules and they make these investments and then the rules change (again).”
The Connecticut Department of Revenue Services has not analyzed the impact of tax credits for film projects against those of other industries, according to Kevin Sullivan, the agency”™s new commissioner, who spoke on the credits last month in Hartford.
“The department is almost more in the business of data than we are in the business of analysis,” Sullivan said, adding he hopes to change that stance. “I have not seen that analysis to say that, ”˜plunk down an R&D facility (versus) plunk down a biotech facility; plunk down an insurance office, plunk down a financial services office, a farm and a movie studio ”“ we do not have it.”
