Monday, August 26, 2013

The Missing Piece of the Jigsaw.

Tax relief launched in the UK for high-end TV and animation, is being hailed as “one of the biggest opportunities we’ve had in a generation”. Clive Bull reports



The UK’s already robust film and television production sector is experiencing another uplift thanks to recently launched Creative Sector Tax Reliefs announced for high-end television and animation, with a games incentive pending EC Sate Aid Approval. The schemes include provision for tax relief on television productions where the budget exceeds £1m per broadcast hour, amounting to a 25% rebate on qualifying production spend within the UK, capped at 80% of the budget. To a large extend, the new television incentive is based on the existing Film Tax Relief (FTR), which is credited with bringing numerous major productions to the UK. As with the FTR, there is a points-based cultural test to establish whether the production qualifies as British.
            “The Film Tax Relief, since it was launched in its present form in 2007, has been a great success,” Adrian Wootton, chief executive of the British Film Commission and Film London, says. “It’s attracted an awful lot of inward investment, which has allowed the British film industry to invest and expand.”
            But while film companies were finding the UK an attractive proposition both in terms of facilities available and the financial incentives, there was a growing feeling the large-scale television productions, particularly from the US, were not being offered the same competitive edge. That case was conveyed by the industry to the UK government and the result was the announcement of a tax relief in April 2012 which already appears to be attracting ambitious drama projects that might previously have had to look elsewhere.
            Wootton says a lot of creative decision-making informs television companies’ choice of location, unless that choice is ruled out on the ground of finance. Companies like HBO, he adds, were insisting that they wanted to come to the UK but needed the level playing field that a competitive incentive affords in order to make that choice. “They said, ‘We’re spending billions of dollars worldwide and where’s the one place we want to shoot and we can’t? It’s in the UK. So give us the reason to do it. We know what you can deliver and we’d rather make it with you if we could.’”
            It’s clear that the financial incentive is not the only motivation behind productions preferring to be based in the UK. “Think about the concentration of facilities that we have, the quality of the crews, the amount of investment we have made in training, the time zones – and also the language factor is not an inconsiderable one,” Wootton says. “There’s a whole multiplicity of factors and what we needed was the missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle. We’ve got that missing piece now and I think we’ve got a really competitive and exciting offer that people will want to grab.”
            The worldwide shift towards high-end serial drama is another significant factor behind the new incentive, as terrestrial broadcasters, along with cable, satellite and online players, seeking to give themselves an audience USP, move increasingly towards more lavish shows with higher production values.
            Richard Williams, chief executive of Northern Ireland Screen, cites HBO’s Game Of Thrones as a case in point. “It is the perfect example,” he says. “I think our being able to articulate what the value of Game Of Thrones was to the development of the sector here, and its value to the economy, was one of a number of very significant arguments that led to the tax incentive.”
            The HBO epic fantasy series is now confirmed as shooting for a fourth season in Northern Ireland. Williams says help from the Northern Ireland Assembly in funding the pilot was the clincher: “We provided the same level of incentive for the pilot that we did for the first season, on the logic that if you don’t get the pilot, you can’t get the series. So that was a bit of a risk, but it paid off for us. And that is one of the important pieces of the legislation – that the incentive needs to be available to pilots, because for a lot of the broadcasters that’s still the way they do it. Game Of Thrones wouldn’t have happened in Northern Ireland if the pilot hadn’t happened in Northern Ireland.”
            John McVay, chief executive of Pact, which represents UK independent content, was on the Treasury working group that advised government on the structure of the new tax relief. He agrees that high-end series will be attracted to the UK by the scheme. “If you look at the strategies of a lot of the US networks that produce high-cost drama, they are looking to try and find ways to finance that,” he says. “They look around the globe for co-production partners, co-financing and incentives, because the TV industry has gone global very quickly. So the UK is well placed to be a hub for that type of production internationally. But also it’s a great opportunity for us, because we have very high-quality international producers based in the UK. Having an incentive in your pocket when you go out into the market is very, very helpful.”
            McVay says the Starz/BBC Worldwide production Da Vinci’s Demons, shot in South Wales with the help of the Welsh government, is another example of the kind of high-quality drama already shooting in the UK. “They started that without incentives and I’m quite sure those shorts of channels and producers will be looking at the UK with even more interest now that we have an incentive,” he says. “People like to work in the UK because we offer very high quality, have a very can-do attitude, and the people are generally welcoming to production. We have very good technical skills, and very good post-production and CGI – that’s been the rationale for so many US feature films to come here.”
            Already prompting widespread interest from around the world, Wootton says the initiative will bring inward investment from big international dramas, co-productions with UK companies, and domestic drama that was previously going offshore.
            “I think it’s one of the biggest opportunities we’ve had in a generation,” Wootton adds. “This is a brand new opportunity and, certainly, if the volume of enquiries and level of interest that we’ve been getting both in London and in the US office of the British Film Commission is anything to go by, the UK will soon be first choice for international high-end production.”

For more information go to: http://www.britishfilmcommission.org.uk/


Article courtesy of Location UK.

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