North Star
Hollywood productions are migrating to Oregon for its ample facilities and tax rebates
Ask Oregon Film executive director Tim Williams why productions should shoot in the Beaver State, and he’ll spell it out in stark and simple terms.
“The locations are diverse, and we have a 25% cash rebate, and it’s payable as quick or quicker than any other state that I know,” says Williams.
The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes slowed business down in 2023, but Oregon has seen a steady influx of film and TV productions in recent years, including Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning animated film “Pinocchio” (2022); the sci-fi feature “65” (2023), starring Adam Driver; director-star David Oyelowo’s “The Water Man” (2020) and Aidy Bryant’s Hulu series “Shrill” (2019-2021).
“There have been sizable projects coming through, so I went from traveling a lot to staying at home,” says Ime Etuk, a veteran assistant director who recently co-wrote and directed his first feature, the upcoming “Outdoor School.”
Awesomeness production exec Don Dunn had executive produced a trio of Portland-set “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” movies for Netflix that were actually shot in Vancouver, but when he ran the numbers for “Trinkets,” a coming-of-age comedy series for the streamer also set in the Oregon city, he found that it would only cost a little bit more to shoot it there. His experience proved to be so positive that he returned to Portland last spring to shoot Awesomeness’ upcoming Paramount+ original movie “Little Wing,” starring Kelly Reilly and Brian Cox.
“We used a lot of the same crew that we used on Seasons One and Two of ‘Trinkets’ and we got a lot of support from the film commission,” says Dunn of the “Little Wing” production.
The state’s commission, officially known as the Oregon Governor’s Office of Film & Television, maintains a large photo database that productions can access, and its staff will put together a lookbook and connect potential producers with permitting agencies and location scouts. What sets it apart is Williams’ ability, informed by his years as a producer (he has credits including “In the Bedroom”), to analyze a film’s budget. Among the tools he uses: Moviemagic Budgeting software.
“My first step with everybody is to have them send me a budget and I will physically go through it in Moviemagic and tag it for the incentive, so we can give a better projection of how much the rebate might be,” says Williams, who handles the auditing process with the commission’s IT and financial manager, Nathan Cherrington. “You’re dealing with us and that’s it.”
Oregon became a minor league player in the incentive game in 2005, when the state raised its top payroll rebate to 16.2%. It subsequently landed films such as “Twilight” (2008) and “Extraordinary Measures” (2010) and the TV series “Leverage” (2008-2012). By the time Williams took the role in September 2014, the film business had slowed — the two “Twilight” sequels were lost to Vancouver — but production was still humming on the TV side with NBC’S “Grimm” (2011-2017) and IFC’S “Portlandia” (2011-2018).
While film and TV projects are glamorous and, at times, very lucrative, commercials have sustained Oregon’s production community. Portland-based ad agency Wieden+kennedy has created campaigns for Beaverton-based Nike (e.g., “Just Do It”) and other major brands, and over the years, the business mushroomed as alums from Wieden+kennedy and Nike went on to launch their own agencies, like Swift and Instrument. These firms service the growing market, which includes other big local footwear and apparel makers such as Columbia Sportswear and Adidas — both of whose
North American headquarters are located in Portland — as well as tech companies such as chipmaker Intel, which maintain a large presence in the area.
“There’s been a lot of good quality tech work which has shifted a lot of energy and created a ‘Why not?’” says Davis Priestley, founder and president of Revery, which bills itself as a “global storytelling studio.” Google has an office in Portland and “now Airbnb is here. There’s no reason why not to shoot an Airbnb lifestyle spot in downtown Portland.”
The state has also been a force in the animation world for decades. It began with the late Claymation pioneer Will Vinton, best-known for the California Raisins campaign in the 1980s and Eddie Murphy’s animated series “The PJS” (1999-2001). Will Vinton Studios later morphed into Laika, which has produced award-winning animated features including “Coraline” (2009) and “Missing Link” (2019). In Portland, there’s also Bent Image Lab, which does both animation and visual effects, and a satellite office of L.a.-based animation house Shadowmachine, where Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning stop-motion feature “Pinocchio” was shot.
“Animation is a very large and consistent workforce, and it was one of the few things that drove us through the pandemic,” says Williams. “We had three feature films up here and they just went remote and kept going.”
However, when it comes to film and TV tourism, live action is the name of the game. The biggest draw is 1985’s “The Goonies.” The Oregon Film Museum is housed in what used to be Clatsop County Jail in Astoria, which was the setting for the prison break scene at the beginning of the movie, and it helps put on an annual “Goonies Day” event every June 7.
For “Goonies Day” in 2015, marking the 30th anniversary of the film’s release, “we had about 15,000 fans in town, and Astoria is a town of 10,000,” says Mac Burns, executive director of the Clatsop County Historical Society, which runs the film museum and three others.
There’s also the Oregon Film Trail, a statewide network of 41 signs across the state marking the shooting locations of films ranging from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975) and “Sometimes a Great Notion” (1971), both adapted from novels by Ken Kesey, to “Stand by Me” (1986) and “Free Willy” (1993).
For most, Oregon is defined by the urban and suburban environs of Portland, the state’s largest city, whose quirks were lovingly satirized in “Portlandia.” Director Gus Van Sant, who made several of his best-known films in Oregon, including “Drugstore Cowboy” (1989) and “My Own Private Idaho” (1991), says that, in many ways, the city depicted in the series isn’t that different from the one he encountered when he first moved there in 1970.
“Its bohemian culture was longstanding,” says Van Sant. “A lot of hippies moved there out of their own communities, and the city was very to itself and not particularly concerned with [anything] outside of Portland.”
Although approximately 2.5 million of the state’s 4.24 million residents live in the city’s metropolitan area, it occupies only 6.8% of its 98,466 square miles. Outside of Portland, things are vastly different culturally, leaning red politically, and its topography
Animation is a very large and consistent workforce.” — Tim Williams
varies widely, from rocky coastlines in the west to high deserts in the east, with the Cascade Mountains running north to south in between. Producers concerned about keeping dry should know that it’s also less wet. Portland is No. 3 on the list of large U.S. cities with the most rainy days, but Oregon as a whole ranks No. 20 on the list of states with the highest average annual precipitation.
“It doesn’t rain much here,” insists Jason A. Atkinson, a producer and former Oregon state senator who lives in the southern part of the state. He adds: “This is where most of the grapes that are blended in the Napa Valley wineries are grown. It’s like Napa Valley with peat.”