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Southern Ulster Times, Wednesday, February 17, 2016
Actress seeks to attract film production to area
Actress, director, producer Mary
Stuart Masterson “Fried Green Tomatoes”
is working with Ulster County Executive
Mike Hein to bring a production house to
the county.
Masterson said she has helped to create Stockade Works, a public-private partnership aimed at creating a new media
center in Kingston.
Masterson said it has been noted there
is a lack of diversity in all areas of production “as well as technologists’ jobs so
our hope is to grow the workforce and
actually give access to people who otherwise have not had access and on-the-job
training.”
Masterson said she came to the area
with her four children “and I want to
work where I live. I don’t want to have to
move to Los Angeles or Georgia. I want to
stay here.”
Masterson has wondered why Ulster
County does not have more production
opportunities and questioned the unfairness of the state tax incentive program
offered to film and television companies
that leaves the county out of that advantage. She has been working with Hein on
this issue and has begun to reach out to
various heads of production urging them
to work in Ulster County.
“Space is cheap and there are a lot of
people out of work who could go to work,
there is a lot of the creative class who
already live there, there’s talent, writers,
directors, producers, actors, sound mixers, editors, film composers living here,
so why isn’t it working,” she said. “They
say the tax incentive package is good but
it’s not good enough to compete with
Georgia.”
Masterson said those she has asked,
such as the head of AMC studios, the
Actress, director, producer Mary Stuart Masterson (R) attended the State of the County
Address to show her support of bringing more film and production work to Ulster County.
Sundance Channel, said they would come
if the tax program were more favorable.
While pushing for this change,
Masterson said the goal of Stockade
Works is “to get a building, build up
the infrastructure, [have] state of the
art sound stage facilities, post-production facilities, and push some training in
partnership with the SUNY system and
the Community College to offer annual
boot camp training to try to teach people
crew production skills. Even though it’s a
union dominated workforce, you have to
learn it and get hours and then get union
membership.”
Masterson said it is often difficult