By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer

Recently I made my first visit to a movie studio. It was on the old Navy base in North Charleston.

Actually, it wasn’t a real movie studio, but a vacant warehouse GryphonPix Entertainment used temporarily to shoot promotional trailers for the psychological thriller “The Interview,” GryphonPix’s first feature film.

The project is entirely local. GryphonPix is based in West Ashley. The movie will be shot entirely in the Lowcountry, much of it in downtown Charleston. The cast and crew are local. Film students at Trident Technical College will serve as paid technicians on the project.

GryphonPix plans to begin shooting “The Interview” in January. Filming will last about four weeks, followed by four to six months of editing, sound-tracking and general tweaking. Then GryphonPix will submit the movie to the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals.

After the film festival submissions, GryphonPix will premiere “The Interview” somewhere in Charleston, either at a theater or perhaps even outdoors. GryphonPix has yet to decide.

The entire project is encouraging and inspiring. It shows we have the makings of a viable film industry here.

And we need to do whatever is necessary to help that industry grow.

Smart business

GryphonPix’s principals aren’t just moviemakers, they’re astute business people. During a press conference announcing the forthcoming filming of “The Interview,” GryphonPix principal Craig Hadley, the film’s writer and director, cited the Angelou Report’s recommendation that the Lowcountry develop five business clusters, creative industries being one of them.

Moviemaking falls smack dab in the heart of the creative industries cluster.

Businesses spawned by a film industry are numerous. Film equipment companies and suppliers, companies that make and supply the film equipment parts, electrical and lighting outfits, digital technology companies, set-designing businesses, builders, costume providers, transportation companies, even food caterers—you name it, most likely a film industry would generate it.

“The biggest misconception the public has about making movies today is that a movie has to be a blockbuster to make money,” according to Rich Carnahan, GryphonPix managing principal. “The facts are that moderately low-budgeted films dominate the success ratio in this industry. They enable production companies to recoup all production and initial investment costs and realize profits from one of the many markets of distribution (foreign theatrical, home video, cable, etc.) Having a ‘blockbuster’ is just the icing on the cake.”

You don’t need a big film budget to reap big dollars. As GriphonPix principals point out, the 1973 hit “American Graffiti” was shot on a $777,000 budget but hauled in $115 million. Robert Rodriguez shot his 1992 film “El Mariachi” with a mere $7,000 and ended up making more than $2 million on the flick—and putting Austin, Texas, where he shot the movie, on the filmmaking map.

More recently, the 1999 smash-hit “The Blair Witch Project” was shot on a paltry $37,000 budget but made more than $140.5 million. In 2004, “Napoleon Dynamite,” made for $400,000, reaped more than $44.5 million, and “Super Size Me,” shot on a skimpy $67,000 budget, netted a nice $11.5 million.

Don’t wait for Hollywood

If GryphonPix’s “The Interview,” being shot on a $675,000 budget, or any other Lowcountry-produced feature film were to haul in such fat numbers, the economic impact would be staggering. Those big bucks would stay in the community, supporting existing businesses, creating new ones and generating jobs—including opportunities for local actors, screenwriters, directors and film technicians.

Such success would probably draw Hollywood’s attention. The big studios out there might look here more frequently for film locations.

And, as Hadley pointed out, now is the time to get Hollywood looking our way. Louisiana was a favorite locale of Hollywood studios until Hurricane Katrina ravaged much of that state. It sounds cold-blooded, but Louisiana’s misfortune is our opportunity, as Hollywood continues to seek locations in the Southeast.

But we shouldn’t wait for Hollywood to tap us on the shoulder. We need to go ahead and start making movies and building a film-industry cluster.

When we do that, Hollywood will, eventually, start doing more business here.

Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.

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