With 10 West Studios up and running in West Michigan, the state currently has two stage facilities ? the other being Grace & Wild ? and a third, the $70 million Motown Motion Picture Studio, is expected to break ground this summer in a former Detroit auto plant.
In West Michigan, talk about stages in Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids certainly pleases Rick Hert, the West Michigan film commissioner.
“The majority of movies are going to Detroit Metro,” says Hert, who says he’s had interest from 10 to 14 producers of indies and studio movies about filming in his neck of the woods. That area is a wide expanse of half the state. It consists of 41 counties that extend east from Lake Michigan to Lansing and north-south from Mackinac Island to the Indiana border.
Hert has had the job since last July, during which seven features, budgeted from $100,000 to $5 million, have shot in such varied areas as Muskegon, Grand Rapids, Traverse City, Holland, Kalamazoo and Niles.
While he also serves as head of West Michigan Tourism, Hert has had considerable film experience during his 30 years in the tourism business. He was a location scout for movies as part of his positions in the Tourism departments of in Oregon and Washington.
Unlike the Michigan Film Office, headed by Janet Lockwood and located in the state capital of Lansing, Hert’s film office “is not state funded, we have no budget and we’re doing this off the seat of our pants,” he comments.
To aid in funding, the 500-seat Grand Rapid’s Celebration theatre will host a May 5 premiere of the $7 million budgeted “The Steam Experiment,” starring Val Kilmer and Eric Roberts, that filmed in Grand Rapids last year. All proceeds will be given to the film office.
Rick Hert’s phone number is 616-260-2322.
