How to Collect Information

It’s relatively simple to get spending information from major projects. It’s not as simple with all of the smaller projects such as commercials, documentaries, educational videos or television shows. You may not be directly involved in every small project that’s shot in your area so you will need to find ways of getting accurate information about their activities.

The most important thing you can do is to devise a way to keep track of projects that have either filmed in your area, or have enquired about filming there. Be sure to get the name of someone in charge, the company, and a way to contact them later. Periodically check with these companies and survey them to find out whether they have filmed and how many days they were in your area.

Ask those regularly working in the industry like production managers, location managers or crew to keep you informed about projects they have worked on that you may not be aware of. Many of these smaller projects may not give you the economic data you need, but if you know how many days they spent in pre-production, production and post-production, you can use the Production Revenue Tracking Guideline form to determine their impact.

Don’t forget about local production. You can ask production and post production companies in your region to supply you with information on how much money they have brought into your area. These companies are active members of your industry, producing jobs and revenue and, if you choose, can be part of your economic impact reporting.

The danger with including local production companies in your economic impact reporting is that it’s possible to report some projects more than once. For example, you may have economic impact information provided by a commercial, which was produced by a local company that also provides you with an impact figure based on its yearly production revenues. While it’s impossible to be entirely accurate in reporting, be as careful as you can that each project is only included once.