Director Kasi Lemmons (right) with actors Cynthia Erivo and Joe Alwyn on the set of “Harriet” (Photo by Glen Wilson courtesy Focus Features)
Made in and around Central Virginia, including Petersburg and its environs, the 2019 film “Harriet,” by director Kasi Lemmons, was nominated for a slew of awards, including two Academy Award nominations and Golden Globe nods for actress Cynthia Erivo and the song “Stand Up,” composed by Erivo and Joshuah Brian Campbell.
Prestige projects come along in large part due to the efforts of the Virginia Film Office. Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film “Lincoln” was lensed around Richmond and Petersburg, and the film garnered Academy Awards for production design and actor Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of the 16th president. Notable television productions have included the lauded 2008 HBO miniseries “John Adams,” which used locations around Richmond and Williamsburg; Showtime’s “Homeland,” which utilized streets throughout Richmond for nine episodes; and AMC’s “Turn: Washington’s Spies.”
Momentum for Richmond-area productions has seen an uptick lately, with “The Good Lord Bird,” a Showtime limited-series adaptation of James McBride’s novel concerning the work of abolitionist John Brown, filmed here in 2019. The program features Ethan Hawke, Daveed Diggs and Wyatt Russell, and airs Feb. 16. Meanwhile, the “Walking Dead” spinoff “World Beyond” resumes shooting in the area for its second season starting in May, just a month after its first season premieres, while the Apple TV Plus production of NBA star Kevin Durant’s “Swagger,” with “Black Panther” star Winston Duke, is set to resume production later this year.
Showtime’s “Homeland” shoots on a Richmond street. (Photo by Anthony Platt courtesy Showtime)
Netflix and …
Further excitement stirred in the film community in April 2019 when Netflix’s vice president of physical production, Ty Warren, and Ted Sarandos, the streaming entertainment company’s chief content officer, sent a letter to Gov. Ralph Northam. “We make a large portion of our content in Los Angeles and New York,” the letter read. “However, when we do look outside of our core production hubs, Virginia has the potential to be an attractive location with great creative and technical talent.
”And if you sense a “but” here, you are right.
The Netflix executives acknowledged that the region is attractive, but they suggested that an increase to the state’s annual film incentive budget of $6.5 million would make an already intriguing prospect all the more ready for its close-up. Virginia reimburses eligible productions with a minimum budget of $250,000 for up to 15% of all qualifying expenses, which includes wages. A production shot in an economically distressed area of the state is granted a base of 20%.
The Netflix letter offered Georgia as an example, noting that in Atlanta alone, the company has long-term leases on 10 studios where four original series are in production. Georgia doesn’t cap its film incentives, and in 2018, it kicked in $600 million, with film and production companies spending almost $2 billion in the state.
A Quiet Intensity
While some television shows involve big-name stars and action-packed plots — and budgets in excess of $250,000 — the insightful series “The Future of America’s Past” enters its second season on PBS this spring, telling stories from the past in a documentary format.
These half-hour journeys into history are produced by Field Studio, a collaborative effort by Richmond-based documentarians Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren. The episodes are hosted by historian and educator Ed Ayers (Hannah’s father). The first season went on location to take up various subjects, including the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans; the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that killed 146 workers, mostly young women who were trapped in the building; and the importance of Fort Monroe near Hampton, the site where slavery began in British North America and where formerly enslaved persons were granted asylum during the Civil War.
The program brings history into resonance with the present. “When researching the topics we’ve selected for each episode,” Warren explains, “Hannah and I work to find characters who bring alive the history we’re telling. We learn about their personal connections to the past when visiting them on research trips, through quiet conversations that spark our imaginations.”
In this way, Hannah Ayers underscores, “We’ve found that it’s important to treat every conversation with the assumption that any moment could make it into the episode. What might feel like a tangent at the time could turn into a revealing moment that gives the episode a personal, unexpected touch.”
Opening Scenes
On June 14, 2010, at St. John’s Church, then-Gov. Bob McDonnell, flanked by costumed historical interpreters, ceremonially signed into law Virginia’s first tax credit legislation for the motion picture industry. This resulted from a long campaign by Virginia’s filmmaking community to make the commonwealth a preferred setting for film and television productions. The state, however, has lagged behind in its financial backing of Virginia’s film potential, while other states outspend Virginia in luring productions.
It’s possible that the significant changes in the makeup of the state’s lawmaking body may usher in greater incentives. As for what future incentives — or Netflix — might bring here, like they say in the business, stay tuned.
