We Meet Liz Gilman, Executive Director of Produce Iowa

Today I, along with friends Dave Thrasher and Jay Villwock, met with the Executive Producer of Produce Iowa, Liz Gilman.  I learned that Liz didn't apply for the job but was offered it instead.  It appears her office has $400,000 in the budget, which will come in handy as all desks and files and everything was lost when the Iowa Film Office fell.  Liz wants to build a database to attract crew and establish locations for prospective filmmakers to search.  She will use a software many film offices now utilize, Real Scout.  She said she met with members of the Association of Film Commissioners of the World during her trip in recent weeks to Los Angeles, which included leaders of film offices in other U. S. states.  She has toured the state to promote the new film office and meet creative Iowans.  Liz said she would make information available to filmmakers and cast and crew soon via the internet, so stay tuned to this report site.  Pictured are yours truly Gene L. Hamilton, Liz Gilman, Jay Villwock, and David Thrasher.

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen

A few months ago, the Branstad administration reactivated the Iowa Film Office. Only, they don’t call it the Iowa Film Office anymore. It’s now Produce Iowa.
And the office is no longer housed in the Iowa Department of Economic Development (or even in the Iowa Economic Development Authority, as that former department is now called). Instead, it’s under the umbrella of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs.
Changing the name makes perfect sense, of course. After all, if you type “Iowa Film Office” into Google, the word “scandal” is still offered as the most popular search options. And it hasn’t even been a year since the last of the trials ended for the state employees and filmmakers accused of grossly abusing Iowa’s film tax program.
Given how much the scandal made Iowans look more like easy marks than future movie moguls, it’s little wonder that Republican Gov. Terry Branstad decided to leave the office dark when he began his fourth term in 2011.
But in the two decades before the scandal, the Iowa Film Office did provided some benefit to Iowa and to the state’s fledgling film industry. It served as a clearinghouse for information about filmmaking in Iowa and helped bring about the filming of such classics as “Field of Dreams” and “The Bridges of Madison County.”
It was only after lawmakers got greedy — and state economic development employees got criminally sloppy — that the office became focused exclusively on aggressively going after films with bigger and bigger budgets.
With the dust from the scandal finally settling, it makes sense to tap the state’s Department of Cultural Affairs offer to set up some kind of front door for filmmakers and other media producers who might be considering a shoot in Iowa and who need advice on where to find equipment and qualified technicians.
Produce Iowa, after only three months in existence, is little more than a desk in the Iowa State Historical Building, a placeholder website (www.produceiowa.com) and a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ProduceIowa). But the new office’s executive producer, Liz Gilman, has been traveling the state and talking with producers, festival directors, tourism officials and other entrepreneurs to see how the office could best be of service to their efforts.
Gilman — as the owner of Gilman Media Inc. in West Des Moines — already has significant experience coordinating media production for a variety of companies that range from the local (Maytag Dairy Farms and Ruan Transportation) to the national (Comcast, Mediacom and HBO). And she understands that — when given enough opportunities — local technicians, cameramen, editors, managers and directors can make a living off of non-entertainment productions more so than waiting for the occasional movie shoot.
After being stung so painfully by the film scandal, we’ve been editorializing for the past few years about the need to dial back the state’s cinematic vision. But we also think Gilman is developing a more a realistic approach to how to grow Iowa’s film, TV and digital media-production community in a sustainable way.
The administration is being understandably cautious, but we look forward to see what Produce Iowa comes up with for how to support the development of this industry as well as how to work to improve the way Iowa gets portrayed on the silver, small and hand-held screens.

Landlocked Film Festival begins today

Iowans may no longer have stars in their eyes when dreaming about the state’s filmmaking future, but there are still a good number of film-makers and film-lovers active in the state.
The Seventh Annual Landlocked Film Festival, for example, kicks off today in downtown Iowa City. Although this year’s festival does not include as many workshops and discussion groups as in the past, there are still more than three dozen films to view over the weekend.
For a schedule, visit www.landlockedfilmfestival.org.