Photograph by Jackson Davis
A few years back, I ran into an old colleague who had been a designer for a publication where we had both worked. I asked him what he was up to now. “I’m doing film work,” he replied. “I’m an interactive motion graphic artist.”
A what?
“Have you ever seen a shot where someone is sitting at a computer and you can see their screen?” he explained. “I design what’s on their screen.” I didn’t even know that was a job.
In recent years, thanks to generous tax credits, Georgia has become known as the “Hollywood of the South,” and it has changed the landscape of the state. Some people, like my friend, have forged new film-related careers. The Atlanta area is suddenly rich in film soundstages. And it’s no longer a rarity to stumble upon an on-location film shoot, as I did a few times when Black Panther used The Woodruff Arts Center as a backdrop.
Georgia has come a long way since the 1970s, when Deliverance was the first film of note to use the state as a location. The star of that movie, Burt Reynolds, then shot Sharky’s Machine and Smokey and the Bandit here, and state leaders began to hype Georgia as a filming destination. But the industry exploded when the tax credits took hold. The state went from having 45,000 square feet of soundstage in 2010 to 4.1 million square feet today.
As Jewel Wicker reports in this month’s cover story, however, Georgia’s film industry is resetting. The heights of the prepandemic era are gone, perhaps never to return. State lawmakers seem to have an itchy trigger finger to weaken the tax credits. The industry has endured strikes by screenwriters and actors, along with a pullback of projects from streaming services. Everyone awaits a new normal, and no one is certain what that will be.
Film has been a significant part of popular culture for more than a century. From Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, filmmakers have created new canvases that charm and thrill audiences. It’s hard to imagine a world without The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, or Star Wars.
Watching the annual broadcast of The Wizard of Oz on television was a childhood ritual. I can remember my sense of wonder when the film opened in black-and-white, then switched to Technicolor when Dorothy opened the door of her house after the tornado set it down in the land of Oz.
I was introduced to many classic films for the first time at The Silver Screen repertory movie house at Peachtree Battle Shopping Center. Before cable television, before videotapes, before DVDs, and before streaming, movie houses like the Silver Screen flourished. The Silver Screen was known for its inspired double bills: Bogie and Bacall in To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep; Bette Davis in Now, Voyager and Dark Victory; Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound paired with Notorious. There were also weekend showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
The film industry has undergone massive change over the last 50 years. First, cable television, videotapes, and Blockbuster killed the need for repertory movie houses. Then Netflix killed the video stores by delivering DVDs to your doorstep. The pandemic and the ability to stream current films at home are only the latest game changers. The recent closing of the Regal Hollywood 24 off I-85 is symptomatic of that evolving landscape.
But there will always be a hunger for the escapism of a great film, no matter how it is delivered to the consumer. And Georgia—with its infrastructure and talent, both on-screen and off-screen—is set up to continue to attract film and television projects.
As Shoeless Joe Jackson said in Field of Dreams: “If you build it, he will come.” And Hollywood has certainly come south.
Read the full story: The Great Reset: When will Georgia’s film industry find a new normal?
This article appears in our November 2024 issue.
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