Is Clark County ready for its close-up?

Some TV shows and films with Vancouver/Clark County scenes:

o “Wild,” starring Reese Witherspoon, filmed at Paul’s Restaurant Nov. 7, 2013. Release date Dec. 5.

o “Portlandia,” TV series, filmed at the Bonneville Power Administration Ross Complex and PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center.

o “Leverage,” TV series starring Timothy Hutton, filmed in various Vancouver locations in 2009 and 2011.

o “Extraordinary Measures,” 2010 film starring Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell, partially filmed in the Vancouver City Hall building.

o “Twilight,” a 2008 film starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, shot at Kadow’s Marina, Washougal, Bonneville Dam and Bridge of the Gods.

o “Nowhere Man,” 1996 TV series starring Bruce Greenwood, scenes shot at The Columbian.

With more than 100 million online video views, 190,000 subscribers and a new Hollywood book and movie deal, the Vancouver-made “The Haunting of Sunshine Girl” may be the city’s most successful film and video project ever.

But as the series and its network continue to grow, what has been a Clark County success may move elsewhere, largely because of Washington’s small film incentive cap.

The cap of $3.5 million annually is lower than many other states, including Oregon, which has a cap of $10 million; New Mexico, which has a rolling cap of $50 million; and California, which has a cap of $330 million.

And the Washington cap — which limits the 35 percent tax break that productions can get for filming here — gets used up fast.

This year, Washington’s film incentive budget for the year was gone by late April, mostly on two projects that shot elsewhere in the state. If that budget were larger, the state film office could have easily lured many more productions statewide, said Amy Lillard, executive director of the agency, called Washington Filmworks.

“We turned away all these productions that would have spent $55 million in our local economy this year,” Lillard said. “As for the cap, I guess I’d just like to see supply keep up with demand.”

The small cap could also mean that the approaching “Haunting of Sunshine Girl” movie won’t be able to film here, in the Southwest Washington city and county where it’s set.

That would be a shame, because the creators’ deal with The Weinstein Co., a large Hollywood production company that made “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Django Unchained” and “The King’s Speech,” could bring recognition, tourist income and at least some temporary well-paying jobs to the area, said series director Nick Hagen.

“We want to push for this area for sure, either Portland or Washington,” Hagen said. “I’d love to have it in Southwest Washington. It’s set here. But companies like Weinstein, they chase the tax incentives, and Washington’s not as good as Oregon, and Oregon isn’t as good as several other states.”

Hagen and “Sunshine” actresses Mercedes Rose and Paige McKenzie say they love working in Clark County and Southwest Washington. But the decision on where to film the project isn’t up to them. It’s up to Weinstein.

Some success

The low cap isn’t always a deal breaker. Some productions shoot here even without the incentives because the region has a specific look or landmark they need.

“The great thing about this area is that in about an hour’s drive you can film at the ocean, a rainforest, mountain snow or the desert,” Hagen said. “There aren’t a lot of places you can go to find that.”

If a region has the buildings or setting a filmmaker wants, it can end up saving on production costs, said Dan Considine, an actor who has a small role as Weird Dude in “Wild,” which shot in the Pacific Northwest and opens on Dec. 5 in select cities and Dec. 12 in our area.

“Large productions have been few and far between for the Pacific Northwest, but as companies start to realize how much scenery is easily accessible there — the mountains, the beach, the forest — that’s starting to change,” Considine said. “If it’s already there that means they don’t have to build huge indoor sets, which cost a lot of money.”

“Wild,” starring actress Reese Witherspoon, shot several scenes in and around Portland and one scene in Vancouver in November 2013. The film is based on Portland author Cheryl Strayed’s best-selling memoir of hiking more than 1,100 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail as a way to overcome personal tragedy. It’s expected to be one of the bigger movies of the season.

The production shot the Vancouver scene, which was set in Reno, Nev., at Paul’s Restaurant, 1800 Broadway. The filmmakers picked the spot because of its small-town feel and because the restaurant and bus stop next to its parking lot looked like what Strayed had described in her book, said Stacy Donovan of the Vancouver city manager’s office.

“When I spoke to them they said it matched the scene,” Donovan said.

Some Portland-based series, such as “Leverage” and “Portlandia,” also have filmed episodes, or parts of episodes, in Vancouver because of the city’s specific look.

“I don’t think people realize how cute downtown Vancouver is,” said Rose, who has appeared in both of those TV series. “It looks like a small town even though it’s a city. That’s why Astoria (Ore.) is so popular as a location.”

Donovan said downtown Vancouver’s feel and the look of some city parks draw a range of small productions here. The most steady work is for commercials, often for cars, she added.

“Usually it’s a small crew, small production,” Donovan said. “The majority of requests I get are for the waterfront and downtown parks.”

Some scenes from the first “Twilight” film and “Extraordinary Measures” were shot in Clark County because of the forested look or other landmarks.

“A signature look can be a big thing,” Rose said. ” ‘Twilight’ went to (rural), Washington (towns) and not Oregon simply because they liked the look. Everything else aside, that was what was most important to them.”

But that signature look wasn’t enough to keep the rest of the “Twilight” films here. Subsequent films, such as “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” were drawn to British Columbia primarily because the province doles out about $285 million a year on tax credits for the industry yet has similar scenery.

Economic development

Film productions can cause traffic issues and other inconveniences to residents in places where they shoot, but they also bring a lot of upside in the form of economic development, Lillard said.

“As much as I love a good movie, we’re all about bringing jobs and money into the local economy,” Lillard said.

Capturing that money in Southwest Washington is difficult, though. With the small film cap and generally better options in Portland, it’s sometimes hard to convince productions to do more than just a few scenes here, said Rosemary Cooke, director of business development at Visit Vancouver USA, which is also the regional arm of Washington Filmworks.

“We want those projects to not only happen here but we want them to stay here, to spend more money in the economy,” Cooke said. “It’s true they buy catering and other services while they’re here, but at the end of the day they go back to Portland, they stay in hotels there. We need to find ways to keep them in Clark County.”

Even a TV commercial filmed in the city can bring about $150,000 worth of spending, and a big production like “The Haunting of Sunshine Girl” could potentially bring millions of dollars.

“Productions, they bring in a lot of money,” Hagen said. “They create jobs, they buy services in the area, like catering and food. They spend money in the area. They use local hotels. It can be a pretty big deal.”

Beyond that, if a series or film hits the big time, it can draw tourists to the area, bringing even more money to the economy.

” ‘Breaking Bad’ was originally set on the East Coast, but it ended up in New Mexico because of the lucrative film incentive program there,” Lillard said. “That state is still getting tourist dollars from fans of the show.”

Border issues

Being next to Portland has its upsides and downsides when it comes to luring film projects.

Oregon provides a 20 percent rebate on goods and services and a return of up to 16.2 percent on personnel spending in its program, and the state doesn’t require that cast and crew be residents to qualify for labor incentives.

Washington’s program, on the other hand, has far more rebates for companies that hire in-state labor, with only a small amount available for a 15 percent rebate on nonresident labor.

Considine said that policy can make it hard to film in both states, even though “Wild” filmed in both.

“It’s harder for actors to go over to Washington, because the state has a lot of local employment requirements, than it is for Washington actors to slide over to Portland,” said Considine, whose role in the film was shot in Portland.

Harold Phillips, a Portland-based actor, said the policy also makes it hard for productions in Southwest Washington to find enough skilled workers — because most of the infrastructure is over the river in Portland.

“That ‘locals only’ provision sounds good in theory, but in practice it has a chilling effect on the number of qualified workers Vancouver has to offer productions,” Phillips said. “If an Oregonian crew can’t work on productions funded by the Washington incentive, then the labor force is severely restricted. … Because Portland and Vancouver have such an intimate relationship on their respective film communities, being able to draw on the Portland crew base could be a valuable boon to productions in Vancouver.”

Hagen said educational programs for film workers in Southwest Washington could increase the regional draw.

“You come up here and where’s the infrastructure to support your production?” Hagen said. “You have to bring in your crew from elsewhere. All that costs money.”

What’s next

One way Vancouver could start aiming at film dollars is through some job training and the creation of a small studio for productions, Hagen said.

“Even if it was just commercials, you could easily compete with Portland for that sort of work,” Hagen said.

The city of Vancouver has tried to streamline the permitting process, but permitting is done separately for the city, the county, Fort Vancouver National Historic Site and other filming venues.

Most city park permits cost about $250 for a set amount of filming time. Road permits, which need approval from police and fire departments, generally cost around $25 for a set time, Donovan said.

The separate processes for different area permits could be brought together somehow to make it simpler for productions, along with some sort of local incentive program, Phillips said.

“Ease of permitting for productions (including parking and access to city-controlled sites) and a local incentive program to buttress the state program (could help),” Phillips said.

Washington’s sales tax is a problem for film productions that might otherwise consider Vancouver, Rose added.

“You actually have a ton of Portland cast and crew in Vancouver, but they don’t film there because you have sales tax,” Rose said. “Productions also look for cities that are willing to work with them when they want to shut down streets for filming.”

Ridgefield and Yacolt have been particularly friendly about redirecting traffic and closing streets when the Haunting of Sunshine Girl Network wanted to film its YouTube videos in those spots, she said.

The city of Vancouver and even local business associations could also reach out to independent filmmakers in the region and let them know that we want more productions here.

“If you are an independent filmmaker and you need something like a bank scene — that’s really impossible,” Rose said. “You have to find a bank that will let you film there at night.”

Some locations she and Hagen recently found themselves looking for include a warehouse with a drain in the floor, a high school art room and a location where they could build a fake kitchen.

Sometimes the requests get even stranger, Cooke said.

“Everybody’s looking for something to blow up,” Cooke said. “I get calls all the time asking if there are any buildings they can blow up.”

Washington Filmworks has a database of locations and businesses willing to work with film productions in different regions around the state. And people or businesses can go to the agency’s website at washingtonfilmworks.org and go to the “locations” section to list their properties.

If there were a coordinated effort to add local sites to the database, that might also help, Lillard said.

“As we get calls from filmmakers we put together packages that can meet their needs,” Lillard said. “If we have a good database of places willing to work with them in Southwest Washington, that would certainly help.”