OKLAHOMA CITY – The film and television industry has become a major player in Oklahoma.
Earlier this month a reporter with CBS labeled Oklahoma “Hollywood on the Prairie.” The nation’s 46th state has become “one of the fastest growing places to shoot a movie,” said Omar Villafranca in his 4-minute story.
More than $250 million was spent locally on film and television productions in Oklahoma in Fiscal Years 2021 and ’22, according to the Oklahoma Film + Music Office.
The State of Oklahoma now offers $30 million in film production rebates annually, thanks to a state law enacted last year, and earlier this year the city council of Oklahoma City approved healthy rebates for filming in town.
The film industry has created 10,000 jobs in this state in the last 18 months, Villafranca reported.
More than 2,500 Oklahomans, a combination of crew members and extras, were hired for the Tulsa King television series, the largest tv series produced in Oklahoma to date, OF+MO Director Jeanette Stanton said.
“Every production requires a small army of behind-the-scenes workers: equipment operators, set builders, wardrobe makers, city liaisons,” Russ Florence wrote in a recent guest column in The Oklahoman.
“Lance McDaniel, who’s been a filmmaker in Oklahoma for 20 years, told me that filmmaking in Oklahoma has transformed ‘from being an artform, into a business,’” Florence wrote. Film work is now recognized as “a viable industry,” McDaniel said.
MovieMaker Magazine, in its 2022 list of Best Film Schools in the U.S. and Canada, included the Digital Cinema Program at Oklahoma City Community College in south OKC. Several films have been shot at Rose State College, between Interstate 40 and Midwest City High School.
The 1.3 million square-foot former convention center in downtown Oklahoma City was transformed in 2021 into Prairie Surf Media. Today it houses five soundstages and on-site audio recording, said Rachel Cannon, a 25-year veteran of Hollywood who is Prairie Surf Media’s co-CEO with Matt Payne.
“They were instrumental in a vision that was needed to transform the Myriad Convention Center into a working production facility,” Stanton said.
“It meets every production need with 140,000 square feet of clearspan soundstages, endless production support, mill space, attached hotels, commercial grade kitchen, base camp, and parking,” said Yousef Kazemi, OF+MO outreach and production manager.
Conversion of the Myriad Convention Center into Prairie Surf Media “played a vital role in enhancing the film industry in Oklahoma,” Stanton said.
Soundstages “are a crucial part in the development of any film industry,” she explained. “Oklahoma is now able to market itself as a state that can host a production of any size because of the infrastructure that Prairie Surf provides. We can now say ‘no film is too big or too small’.”
The City of Oklahoma City was “a vital piece” of the transformation of the Myriad Convention Center, Stanton added, “because it took city support and collaboration between both parties.”
Green Pastures Studios established a 12-acre campus in 2020 that’s located 18 minutes east of downtown Oklahoma City and 22 minutes from Will Rogers Airport, with direct flights to Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Atlanta.
Its campus includes a 5,500 square-foot soundstage with acoustically constructed walls and ceiling complete with a 16x16-foot elephant door and 27-foot ceilings, a 3,000 square-foot VFX soundstage with greenscreen, and a 20,000 square-foot standing sets stage that includes a police station, hospital, school, an interior house, and a bar.
Green Pastures Studios also is home to the Oklahoma Film and Television Academy, the first entity of its kind in the state to focus solely on training students to meet the industry’s demand for jobs, thereby creating a larger pipeline of skilled industry professionals.
In 2021 the Cherokee Nation Film Office opened a 27,000 square-foot soundstage in Owasso.
Earlier this year Castle Row Studios became the fourth Oklahoma Certified Soundstage. Located just minutes from the heart of downtown OKC, this 10,600 square-foot facility boasts three recording studios, a live performance venue, as well as numerous multi-purpose production rooms.
OKC, Tulsa rank high among filmmakers
Oklahoma City and Tulsa were ranked among the top destinations for production in North America this year by MovieMaker Magazine on their annual Best Places to Live and Work as a Filmmaker in 2022.
“We have seen a significant increase in interest from companies in the film industry looking to get out of California,” said Brent Kisling, executive director of the state Commerce Department.
Enactment of Senate Bill 608 last year, which created the Filmed in Oklahoma Act, “will put Oklahoma at the top of the list not only as a film location but also for production studios and other businesses in the industry,” Kisling said. The $30 million film rebate program established by the legislation “is another tool for us to use in our economic development efforts, helping us to diversify our state’s economy and bring more jobs and investment to the state.”
More than two dozen Oklahoma communities – including Lawton – have been certified “film friendly” through OF+MO’s Oklahoma Film Friendly Community Program. Additional communities “are honing their resources with participation in the Film Friendly Community Program,” Stanton said.