As we attended the first American Film Market in Las Vegas earlier this month, we were overwhelmed by the support we had received from our professional peers for our work at Babs Do Productions and our hopes for Babs Do Studios in Nevada. With so many stories of how people got their start in the film industry mixed with the AFM sessions updating us on the newest happenings across entertainment, we were inspired to take a good look at our plan for Babs Do Studios in Nevada and to reevaluate what we could do with such a system as one consistent point kept being made, a need for something new.
Film Tax Incentives Around the World
The Location Expo at the AFM is where film commissions across the world come to share details on their film tax incentive programs and what their countries, states, and areas offer for film and media production. After examining all of the programs, their benefits, and their ongoing development, it was clear that a key difference amongst them was whether there were major sources of infrastructure such as sound stages and production facilities or not.
For all the efforts across the United States to provide film tax incentives in every state and even broken up into multiple incentive programs throughout a state in some instances, it is surprising that a modern production, with all of the technology and benefits we have in 2024, would consider going overseas to recreate a US city rather than film in the actual city within the US. The explanation for this comes back again to the level of incentives but also the availability of trained crews and film and media infrastructure to support modern film production. As we have seen in Nevada, infrastructure one would think would be in place for what is famously known as the “entertainment capital of the world”, is actually not as developed as expected or even at all in some instances.
With various states providing updates on domestic studio developments to bring production, we can see that the current slowed state of the US entertainment industry is causing a cascading effect as some of these studio developments are failing due to a lack of production and a growing number of them are currently set to be sold on the open market. The situation is also causing consideration for incentives programs to be cut or completely removed, as is the current case in Louisiana. Removing state film tax incentives in the current film and media financing system will affect local economies, related industries, independent studios, and rental houses from being able to benefit from large scale film production. High-end production jobs, training opportunities, increased economic activity, and the ability for local artists to have the financial resources to fairly compete in the market with their own independent productions will all be lost or severely compromised without incentives in place or some innovative means to make up for it.
This combination of problems in the industry and in US infrastructure is causing major studios to discuss filming more frequently on an international scale going forward and to even build their own sound stages and infrastructure in other countries outside the US. Even high profile films such as both parts of “Wicked” filmed in England and Egypt rather than any of the studios and sound stages in the US with even more advanced and incentivized film states like Georgia unable to win over the production. The United States of America has been famously ahead of all others when it comes to high quality film production and while international production has its place, to see that the US is falling behind in both business and development is quite troubling.
The Place for Babs Do Studios
For the past year, Babs Do Studios has focused on building and developing its studio system solely within Nevada due to the growing calls for establishing new film and media infrastructure in the state. This was aided further by the attention the state received from major studios and the industry overall that would promise the absolute benefit to the local Nevada film community with new infrastructure in place. However, after witnessing what we saw at the AFM and hearing the voices of our fellow creators across the country, we have come to the decision to offer Babs Do Studios as the universal film and media infrastructure backbone of the United States of America.
On X, we have shared our early proposal to Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and the incoming Department of Government Efficiency to begin a dialogue towards providing film and media infrastructure incentives to aid in this endeavor. As some independent studio developments are being built with the aid of makeshift incentives programs and special accommodations as it is, having a dedicated portion of state infrastructure funding would go a long way towards building new infrastructure, upgrading existing facilities, and providing opportunities for local film and media companies to expand in order to meet the needs of the modern entertainment landscape. As the DOGE is said to be responsible for evaluating government spending and to serve as an advisory position on ways to increase government efficiency and effectiveness, we felt it was best to start with DOGE to request evaluation for such spending. This would not only bring attention to our proposal but would also allow it to be one of the first proposals for consideration for the new government administration coming in 2025. With Babs Do Studios’ quick to build new age infrastructure serving not only production services across all budget levels but also fostering academic connections with professional training offerings, no other plan provides as efficient and wide scale ecosystem as Babs Do Studios can provide.
Babs Do Studios Nationwide
At the full scope of Babs Do Studios’ nationwide development, every state would have film and media infrastructure in place including sound stages, post-production facilities, offices, and connections to professional education and training services for all departments of production. Babs Do Productions would be able to provide in-house and animation production across the US and would be able to more easily serve multi-state productions and co-productions with other studio developments. Independent artists and industry professionals alike would be able to utilize Babs Do Studios for their productions, whole or in part, and would be able to establish and continue their careers in film and media from anywhere in the country. This would also bridge the gap between states that have film tax incentives and those that don’t as we would be able to support filming in states that choose to not to have incentive programs in place that would otherwise be left out of consideration for production for much of the industry. Other studio developments will still have a place as Babs Do Studios would initially augment pre-existing developments and provide states and specific areas without facilities the new infrastructure they would need. Market demand would determine where and when to expand over time in order to provide the best benefits to film and media production communities and related businesses.
Our early estimates put such wide scale infrastructure at $2.5 Billion Dollars to place full-service industry standard film and media facilities in all 50 states, including innovations in distribution, interactive media, and print media. Once more, the economic benefits of the Babs Do Studios building strategy shows through and with modular construction being a key element, if facilities need to be reduced or expanded, our stages can be disassembled and reassembled wherever they are needed and with trends constantly changing as they do in film and media, this approach would be the best for establishing a base of film and media infrastructure for the country and to, hopefully, restore the entertainment industry’s faith and trust in domestic production.
Current Stage
Until the opportunities fall into place for Babs Do Studios to provide this plan for nationwide film and media infrastructure, our efforts will remain focused on building in Nevada as we wait for new film tax incentives to be passed in the early months of 2025 with multiple bills coming from Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures and possibly more (as we’ve heard). As Babs Do Studios was created to provide for a need of the State we now call home, Babs Do Studios can more than provide for the nation Nevada is a part of and by doing so we hope that for artists everywhere, Babs Do Studios can be everybody’s studio.