Lights, camera, masks! Can Israel become a top international filmmaking destination after the pandemic?
In the post-pandemic era, Israel could be poised to become an attractive destination for international movie productions, since the country has had such low infection and death rates and the security situation has calmed down – but only if the government takes certain steps soon, according to Israeli film industry professionals.
Israel was mentioned in a recent Los Angeles Times article about filmmakers from around the world who are searching for places where the coronavirus outbreak has abated so that they can begin shooting movies that were postponed or resume films that had to stop production abruptly due to the outbreak. While the article concentrated mainly on Iceland, it also mentioned Israel and Slovakia as possible destinations for filmmakers.
The movie industry in Israel, like virtually every other sector, has taken a huge hit due to the coronavirus, so any influx of revenue is desperately needed.
“Of course after the coronavirus, Israel will be attractive. There’s no place else in the world like Israel,” said producer Micky Rabinovitz, whose dozens of films include Walk on Water, Junction 48 and the recent teen motorcycle hit, Full Gas. “You’ve got desert, mountains, the beach, all these different landscapes, all of it in just an hour’s drive east to west or a few hours’ drive north to south.”
Israel has “very high-level crews, fantastic professionals, and everyone speaks English, and there’s wonderful state-of-the-art equipment.”
These crews have learned to work very hard and very fast, since all filmmaking in Israel is done on shoestring budgets, he said. “Plus unlike in the US where the unions are really strict about the conditions, where you have to pay all kinds of fringes [fringe benefits, such as holiday pay], here there are unions, but they are much easier to work with.”
While these factors, particularly in the post-pandemic era, could make Israel an inviting place for international productions, other factors work against it.
Haim Mecklberg, who has produced almost 30 Israeli films, including Sand Storm and The Farewell Party, said, “We don’t make a lot of money from producing Israeli films, we do it because we love it, because that’s what we want to do with our lives. But money from providing production services to foreign productions can help us turn a profit and that can give us more money to invest in Israeli movies.”
Israel has had a fraught history with hosting foreign productions, mainly because of the security situation. In 2000, the big-budget Hollywood film Spy Game, starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, was set to start shooting here, but production moved to Morocco after the Second Intifada began. During the intifada and in the years following it, very few international productions even considered filming in Israel, because it was hard to raise funds and get insurance if there was a perceived risk of having to shut down production because of war or terrorism.
In 2014, when it seemed that the security situation had calmed down, two international series co-produced by the Israeli company Keshet began filming in Israel, Tyrant and Dig. But no one anticipated the outbreak of the Gaza war and both productions were moved, Tyrant to Turkey and Dig to Croatia and the US. Since then, in spite of occasional bursts of interest, major international productions have almost completely avoided Israel. Even the recent Netflix series Messiah, for example, which has a great deal of action that takes place in Israel, was filmed in sections of Amman that were made to look like Israel.
One major exception to this rule is Greenhouse Academy, the series streaming on Netflix that is an adaptation of the Israeli series Ha-Hamama, and is produced by Nutz Productions, a subsidiary of Ananey Communications, an Israeli production company. The tween series about an elite spy academy, the fourth season of which was just released, is set in California, but was filmed in and around Tel Aviv. The producers chose to film in Israel because Israeli crews work fast and work well, for affordable wages compared to the US.
But in spite of the success of Greenhouse Academy,
Israel remains prohibitively expensive for most filmmakers, as anyone who has ever looked up Israeli hotel prices can understand.
Israel faces stiff competition from countries such as Morocco, Hungary and Romania, in addition to the destinations mentioned by the Los Angeles Times, Iceland and Slovakia. Why have these countries created multimillion dollar international filmmaking industries and Israel has not?
The problem is incentives, Israeli producers say. Other countries offer them, meaning that the government of these countries will return a certain percentage of the production budget that is spent in the country to the filmmakers, typically about 30%. These countries consider it worthwhile to offer these incentives because the productions bring so much money into the local economy: studio and equipment rentals, hiring locals as crew and extras, hotels, transportation, costumes, catering and much more.
“Israel does not offer incentives, and in the end, productions go to the countries that offer them,” said Mecklberg. “The amounts of money involved are very meaningful.”
Mecklberg has provided the government with proposals for an incentive program, but said that so far, nothing has come of it. One pilot program was scuttled before it was ever tested, he said. “Someone in the government said to me, ‘We have almost full employment, why should we spend money to bring more jobs?’ Well, now that’s changed.”
Rabinovitz echoed this, saying, “Business-wise, without incentives, it doesn’t make sense to come here.”
As I researched this story, every single film industry professional I spoke to – both on and off the record – became vehement when insisting on the need for the government to offer incentives to make it competitive with other countries. Mecklberg cited the example of Hungary, which had only three or four international productions filmed there per year up to 2004 and then began offering these incentives. By 2009, more than 50 international productions were shot in Hungary in a year and now the country has an industry that generates hundreds of millions of dollars annually. In 2017 alone, foreign productions, such as Blade Runner 2049 and Gemini Man, brought in $400 million, according to Screen Daily.
Of course, there needs to be a government in place for any decision to be made about incentives, and the slog through the three elections has delayed any action on this issue. But producers were hopeful that the new government would take this issue more seriously, particularly in light of the massive unemployment brought about by the coronavirus lockdown.
Yoram Honig, founder and director of the Jerusalem Film and Television Fund, which helps bring both Israeli and foreign filmmakers to shoot in Jerusalem by offering incentives, also emphasized the need for government incentives to lure more foreign productions here. In the meantime, his fund has created an animation studio in the capital, which international companies such as Disney and Mattel have used. And work on animated films, which can be done remotely, can continue even during a lockdown.
“You have to invest money to make money,” Honig said. “We invested NIS 30m. in the animation studio and that brought NIS 200m. worth of work to Jerusalem.” By 2021, Honig hopes to have a new studio for live-action films up and running in Jerusalem, which could be used by international productions.
Lev Cinemas chain CEO Guy Shani said, “As soon as the government does away with the quarantine requirement for travelers entering the country, Israel will be a location that will look good to foreign filmmakers,” and pointed out that location shooting in a country can increase tourism, as fans have flocked to New Zealand after the Lord of the Rings series was made there.
Mecklberg, who just finished shooting the black comedy My Neighbor, Adolf in Colombia – which offered incentives – before the virus outbreak, said, “How is it possible that Colombia has money for incentives and Israel doesn’t?”
It’s a question that will likely become more urgent as the Israeli filmmaking industry tries to find a way to flourish following the pandemic.