With her June 30 retirement nearing, Michigan Film Office, Janet Lockwood can finally reveal her secret.
Although she’s been the face of Michigan film for 19 years — and has appeared in three films ? Lockwood admits that, as an actress, “I don’t like movies as much as theater.” Okay, so it’s not really a secret, since she worked on stage for many years.
But to the Michigan film community, Lockwood is a pioneer, the determined, indefatigable leader who’s overseen Michigan’s rise from nowhere to become the top location for Hollywood filmmaking.
The second longest-serving state film commissioner (only Mississippi has her beat) Lockwood didn’t even know the Film Office existed in 1991, when she was asked “out of the blue” to serve as director.
But her surprise wore off quickly as she swung into action, selling Michigan as a film location to anyone who’d listen.
Freelance producer Nicole LaDouceur, a Film Office intern in 1995, recalls that Lockwood “walked fast and she talked fast. Janet was always on the move?
“She really saw the potential for Michigan as a filming location. She thought of it in its highest potential. ?That is the attitude that she took with her every day, if she went to trade shows, when she answered the phone.”
In the ?90s, Lockwood helped put Michigan in the “middle of the pack for movie production. ? We were probably number 19 or 20 out of 50 states,” Lockwood says.
Barely two years later, and thus far this year, 89 movie producers have applied to film in Michigan; eight projects have wrapped and $3 million in film industry job training grants have been sought for West Michigan community colleges, a step towards building an indigenous industry there.
