Film crews boost state revenue

Nevada's tourist volume slumped in 2008, but a select group of visitors kept on coming -- and they even spent more money here than they dropped statewide before the recession began.

Producers and directors of film and television projects spent $110 million shooting and finishing shows in the Silver State in 2008. The results surpassed the $103.3 million the Nevada Film Office counted in 2007, when a writers' strike in November and December brought production nationwide to a halt. The writers' walkout ended in February 2008.

The last year untouched by any major work stoppage was 2006. The film office saw $106 million in revenue that year.

"We were pleasantly surprised that we held our own in 2008, not only through the economy, but through the strike," said Ed Harran, assistant director of the Nevada Film Office, which is part of the Nevada Commission on Economic Development. "We're always reinventing ourselves and being proactive in bringing production here. We don't have the mentality of, 'We have Las Vegas, so they will come.' "

Among the projects filmed in Nevada in 2008 were major movies such as family flick "The Race to Witch Mountain," released in March, and "The Hangover," a paean to Vegas-based bachelor parties. "The Hangover" is scheduled to open Friday.

But the Nevada Film Office's "bread and butter" remains reality television shows, Harran said. Programs including "America's Next Top Model," "American Idol," "My Super Sweet 16" and "Bridezilla" all taped here in 2008. "The Jerry Springer Show" and primetime dramas including Fox's "Prison Break" and CBS's "CSI: Las Vegas" shot takes here, as did countless music videos, commercials, student films and other media projects. About 95 percent of the filming that happened in Nevada occurred in Las Vegas.

Officials at the film office have already coaxed the producers of several big projects to Nevada in 2009, Harran said. They're working with one big-budget production, a remake of a 1980s show that Harran declined to name, to encourage filming here. If producers give Nevada the nod, it would mean "many, many months" of shooting here.

"It would be huge for the state of Nevada," he said.

Since 2000, producers and directors have filmed or taped more than 4,500 projects in Nevada, for an economic impact of more than $1 billion.

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512.