About the MPAU

Founded by a handful of Utah filmmakers and enthusiasts, the MPAU formed as a result of direct concerns regarding the future of the motion picture industry in Utah. Initially driven by the need for financial incentives within Utah, and a single production assistance resource for filmmakers, they set out to establish a political action committee and explore avenues for a community-based studio production facility. They quickly realized they couldn’t do it alone. Fielding concerns from the state industry regarding everything from a perceived decline in production to a lack of education and communication, and faced with the daunting task of change, the founders realized the obvious; Utah needed a unified film community. Through the single voice of a unified community, the force needed to achieve the goals of the organization became viable.

Our Mission

The Motion Picture Association of Utah is a professional organization that represents the private sector of the motion picture industry within Utah. Its primary goal is to provide opportunity and mechanism by which both Utah film professionals and enthusiasts alike can come together as a single organization in order to network, assist, educate, brainstorm, showcase, share, communicate, and promote amongst themselves, state agencies, local businesses, and other community resources.

Its secondary goals are: To establish and maintain a community environment that is supportive of the motion picture industry within Utah. To educate and train in order to facilitate market growth and a stronger industry. To provide a unified voice in state and local government through lobbying and political action for the benefit of the industry.

The MPAU achieves this goals through the following objectives:

• Promote an industry environment that is embraced by the community through events such as awards ceremonies, gala events, film festivals, competitions, premieres and parties.
• Education through seminars, workshops, mentor programs, and classes.
• Production Assistance to all production budgets, providing a resource for both new and veteran filmmakers.
• Encourage cooperation rather than competition through collaborative environments such as studio facilities, mentorship and production assistance programs.
• Promote unity in common efforts, primarily in economic development through political action on financial incentives.

The Backstory

For years Utah’s motion picture industry has enjoyed the tremendous growth and economic benefits of national film crews taking advantage of our beautiful state. What originally started early in the 50’s with the peak of western films, Utah provided the perfect combination of location and support. Motion picture production spiked again in the 80’s with a number of films seeking skilled talent, flexible budget options and a broad range of climates. In the 90’s, the market in Utah shifted to television production with various made-for-TV movies, and a handful of highly successful TV series.

In the early 80’s Canada realized the Hollywood equation; there are two economic requirements to produce viable motion pictures: Infrastructure, and financial viability. Through its development during the western era, Utah had unknowingly built the production infrastructure, and with a significant difference in cost of living, production services and crew rates, Utah was easily financially viable.

With this information, Canada was quick to make steps toward its share of the multi-billion dollar industry. Without a strong infrastructure, they first started on the finances. Providing significant incentives to production companies for the use of Canadian cast, crew, talent and facilities, Hollywood took notice but was slow to action. Having the added expense of moving cast and crew to Canada wasn’t cheap, and with US and Canadian Customs, it was equally less efficient.

In an effort to establish the second half of the equation, Canada provided similar financial incentives for educators in creating schools and training programs for the arts. Soon Vancouver and Toronto would become home to some of the top film schools in the world. With fresh, cheap talent pouring from the school doors, Hollywood didn’t have to fly crews across the border, or fight with immigration for visa extensions. With most of the graduates moving to Hollywood in search of a career, Hollywood found it easy to send them back home. Before long, the local Canadian entrepreneur took advantage of other incentives such as business grants for the arts and employee tax credits to finish building the elusive infrastructure. Rental houses, sound stages, and post-production facilities sprung up overnight.

With even more financial encouragement from the Canadian government, Hollywood studios were building or moving production offices and studio facilities north of the border. Within 20 years the Canadian motion picture industry had developed such that Hollywood itself was beginning to fear for its own demise.

This same Canadian boon didn’t just have Hollywood scrambling for ways to keep its business, with many of the same climates and significantly better incentives, film production in Utah slowly, but steadily followed the lead of the Great Salt Lake. It was drying up. To make matters worse, other states and many nations realized that the Hollywood dream wasn’t limited to just Hollywood. Australia, The Netherlands, India, Mexico and others began following the Canadian model. Texas, New Mexico, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii and Seattle, among others, also began establishing new financial incentives and legislation specifically geared toward filmmakers in an attempt to get a piece of the proverbial pie.

Utah still holds an Ace up its sleeve. Some think we have a pair of them: an established, though feigning infrastructure, and a unique combination of climates and backdrops that can only be found in Utah. The Utah economy believed that the latter was the key to its motion picture success. However, filmmakers won’t come, or stay, for the location alone. And were the jobs go, so does the infrastructure; with the infrastructure, so goes the economy.

Utah’s has two major problems facing its motion picture future. The first is a lack of financial incentives for the filmmaker to move a production to Utah. The unfortunate reality of motion picture production in Utah is this: in the past, the majority of productions have been in remote areas, utilizing out-of-state crews and equipment. As a result, there has been very little film revenue moving through the state economy, keeping film production underneath the radar of legislators. The few highly public productions that did take place were viewed with the typical awe and amazement of people that see the industry from the outside in. As a result, government, the only entity that can negotiate financial incentives on the multi-million dollar scale, drove by wide-eyed and uniformed.

The second is a slowly dying infrastructure due to a disconnected community. Without the work from the once regular productions, non-rooted crew quickly moved with the winds of change, and our infrastructure began to evaporate. Utah’s remaining infrastructure holds itself together by a fine-thread webbing of remaining contacts and the weaning frequency of large-scale productions.

For years, those in the production community were aware of the growing importance of the problem. But many, driven by the need for stable work, were forced to seek jobs elsewhere, moving to L.A. or Canada. Utah’s film industry is standing in the middle of a dark tunnel, watching the light at the end, unsure if it should run toward or away from it.

At this critical juncture, a handful of individuals organized the Motion Picture Association of Utah; a community-driven organization that is determined to do more than keep the industry alive. Rather to get it off life support and rehabilitate it, ready to produce films for the next 100 years and beyond.

Our Services & Programs

Through its charter for education and community development, the MPAU offers services and programs intended to promote local production by simplifying the task of production within the state, while increasing both the quality of our industry and individual productions. Specifically, the MPAU offers the following programs, services and events:

• Seminars & Workshops
• Mentor/Intern Pairing Program
• Newsletters & Community Bulletins
• Political Action Program & Committee

Seminars and Workshops

The MPAU provides unique and well defined roles for seminars and workshops. Seminars provide a low-cost mechanism for educating the local community within specific, individual production areas. Generally seminars are half-day events sponsored by vendors or the MPAU members for the purpose of educating individuals about changes to the industry such as new tools, technologies, or methods of production. Through the corporate sponsor of a seminar, it becomes feasible to reduce the cost of the seminar significantly encouraging its attendance.

Workshops are the primary mechanism for group education. Two or three day extensive classes, workshops teach subjects ranging from pre-production organization, to different film processing techniques. Workshops are generally sponsored and organized by the MPAU directly, but could be sponsored or promoted by a particular vendor. Such might be the case for Kodak and a film-processing workshop. The relationship between seminars and workshops is a structured one, in which the seminar is specifically tailored to compliment an upcoming workshop, encouraging its attendance by serious prospects.

An example of this relationship might include product comparisons between Avid DV, Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Premiere, with follow-up workshops on advanced editing techniques and/or product specific training. A seminar could be sponsored by Arri demonstrating basic lighting techniques and showcasing a new lighting system. The Arri seminar would then promote an Advance Lighting workshop for a detailed, hands-on experience with the new equipment, and more complex lighting examples. The teacher of the workshop is now exposed to individuals who are seriously interested in the respective craft. The teacher can evaluate individuals from numerous classes to determine their candidacy as an intern. This information is then provided to the MPAU for other working-professionals seeking interns and identifying possible new entrants into the service provider area (a young, talented grip) for the Production Assistance Program.

Mentor/Intern Program

This familiar program offers to reduce or eliminate the task of the mentors sifting through countless entries and interviewing possible interns in order to determine if they are strongly motivated and genuinely interested in the mentor’s field. The mentorship program falls directly inline with the workshop and training programs by exposing mentors (who would likely teach these programs) to future possible interns. Mentors can identify early on which students are seriously interested in the training they are offering. A potential early introduction into the mentorship/training program is a short-term immersion program in which participants are exposed to the various processes and stages of film production, and in private or semi-private groups. Essentially providing an opportunity for students to watch, and to an extent, participate in the production continuum.

Newsletter & Bulletins

The communication between the MPAU and its members about the latest industry news and developments is the task the regular newsletters and community bulletins. The MPAU provides a quarterly newsletter that updates the community on major productions and developments. Slated as a “Utah Variety”, the newsletter covers all things related to the industry including new technologies and services, event calendars for the MPAU and partner associations, production status information, job announcements, MPAU direction and more.

The community bulletins are weekly or bi-weekly email notices that serve to supplement the newsletter with timely information updates about productions and calendar events. The community bulletin is carefully structure such that it provides detailed information about what is happening in Utah for the immediate term.

Political Action Program

The Political Action program is the sole entity for representing the interests of the motion picture industry, on a private level, to the local, state, and national governments. Initially created to lobby on behalf of the motion picture industry in Utah state legislation for financial incentives and government-supported programs, the committee is responsible for representing the community on any issue that involves government and the Utah motion picture industry.

At its current state, the PAC is currently working toward legislation of specific financial and tax initiatives:

• Sales Tax Exemption on rentals of motion picture equipment rentals
• State Employment Tax Credits for qualified out-of-state productions
• Use of state-surplus property for qualified productions.