Introducing Wrapbook’s Film Incentive Center

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Before we start today's episode of On Production, A quick note to our listeners. This episode comes with a unique visual element. We'll be joined by AJ Unitas from Wrapbook for a screen sharing session to demonstrate the Wrapbook Production Incentive Center. While you can enjoy this as a podcast, I highly recommend watching the video version for a full understanding of how the tool works. So if you have the chance, make sure to check out the video to get the most out of this episode. 

Welcome back to On production brought to you by Wrapbook. Today I'm thrilled to have a special guest, AJ Unitas from Wrapbook. AJ has been instrumental in creating the Wrapook production incentive center, a helpful set of tools for filmmakers. In this episode, AJ will walk us through the incentive center and help you understand how filmmakers can take advantage of these free tools when approaching production incentives for their projects. AJ, welcome to On Production.

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0:53  

Thanks so much for having me, Cameron. Yeah, I'm super excited to showcase up with the listeners and watchers for this episode, just we build up production incentives. So without further ado, let me let me go share my screen. Perfect. So if you go to Wrapbook.com, and you look click on Resources and go to our production incentive center, or just go to Wrapbook up.com/production-incentive-center, you'll come across we just built in the past couple of months, which is brought books sort of all one stop shop for production incentives. So what's really cool about our center is that we kind of really try to build it from the Tools first perspective. So obviously, when you go to you know, any type of resource guide, whether it's, you know, a directory of incentives, or it's, you know, a state incentive site, you're primarily looking for very few, like very specific answers for your production. So what we did is we built a bunch of tools, which we hope can get you the right answer faster. So to kind of jump right into it, when you come on our incentive page, you'll first see that we have a bunch of different tools to maximize your production. And I'm going to basically quickly just go through and give you guys an overview of what these tools can do to start your incentive search. So I'll kick things off camera with our production incentives finder. So this tool basically allows you to get hooked up with all the potential production incentives you could have for your production. So to get things started, let's come up with a with a potential project. So what are you shooting? What type of project are you interested in making?

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Let's call it a mini series,

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a mini series. Awesome. So you're making a mini series? And the next question is, what's your budget?

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This is a $15 million dollar production. Ooh, nice budget.

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Okay. After you enter those details, and we enter just some quick information, and just about like we are, our incentive center will actually give you a list of all the potential incentive that your project could be eligible for. So you can see here we look at our list, we see Arizona's potential, California has a potential. And this also shows you all the different different types of qualifying production types for the incentives, because not every state has an incentive for every type of media. And the cool thing here is we can actually see the minimum spend, you know, right listed underneath of how much you potentially would need to spend to get qualify for the incentive. So this is our first sort of incentive finder. The idea here is that it can really streamline your search. So you can get a get a moment's glance, like you know, right away of the incentives you could be eligible for. And again, with all things incentive based, it's this is think of this as like a first line of defense. But always get in touch with, you know, an incentives expert like Wrapbook, we have our very own Ryan Broussard can get into the nitty gritty of your project. And now I'd love to take you guys to our next feature we built, which is this compare functionality. So with any type of incentive on our site, you can actually click Compare. And we actually have like a little sort of container down here. So as you look at different incentives, you can sort of add them to your shopping cart, so to speak. And by clicking compare, you can actually see a breakdown of incentives from different states and cities and municipalities, whatever have you but like, what's cool is that in this sort of view, you can actually compare side by side, like, you know, what is the spend in you know, Colorado versus, you know, Alabama,

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3:58  

I just have to stay agent, that's really cool. Because like, if I have a project, some states or some incentive programs may not even want my project, like if I'm doing a reality television show. So like, I love that tool that you built. So like I tell the system, my product type, my budget, and then it gives me a full host and places where I would at least at the base level, be qualified. And then you have this cool tool where then you can compare of those full programs in the portfolio. Maybe only five are interesting to me. And then now I can actually compare them here. That's super cool. Oh,

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I think it's I think, hopefully, it's going to make the incentive process a lot easier for studios, line producers, production companies. That's really our goal with this. And everything too. By the way. Cameron, you mentioned this different qualifying production types. The beauty of comparing with this tool is that you can also see like, what type of incentive is it because for example, you might want to grant a rebate for your project, whereas some people might want like a tax Credit which they could resell. Um, yeah. And by scrolling down, you can actually see like, you know, more details about what's the spend what's the above the line residents. And we have little answers right here to explain like what all these things mean, if you're a newbie when it comes to incentives, things like Project criteria, you know, additional bonuses and also to, you'll notice, we have a link to every single film office. So let's say you just want to get in touch with, you know, Colorado home office and talk to them and see like, you know, what they could do for you. The great news is you can actually email them or go to their website right away. We're really excited about those two tools. But we've got two more to show. The next one I'm going to show you is our AI tool, which is extremely exciting. So basically, everyone you know, is talking about ChatGPT, as of the recording of this podcast, Sam Altman has been reinstated as CEO, but when you watch it, who knows, but I will say this is our tool, which is AI production incentives experts. So what we did here, and Cameron, you know, as but also played a huge role in developing this, which is basically, we've trained this bot on every single page and all the information we've imported into the website about production centers. And what the experience is, is that you can actually talk to this as if it's, you know, our very own, you know, incentives expert, and it will literally try to answer your question the best of your ability. So to demonstrate this to, you know, the listeners and viewers, I'm going to basically first start by just giving my email rate. And then after that, I'm going to ask it a question. I'm telling this AI bot that my $8 million budget feature film takes place in a forest. So that's a really important exterior to me. And I'm asking it, what are some places I could shoot that offer a fully refundable incentive, because my production, you know, we don't want to get involved in trying to sell it. So we just want to be able to get a refund on everything we make. So by asking the AI bot this it actually then goes through all of our pages we published. And it's writing now, right now, as an AI incentives expert, I can provide general guidance than states that offer fully refundable incentives that have forested areas suitable for your feature film. And right here, it's actually told us Oh, it's it's generalized. It's suggesting New York, which obviously has upstate New York, a lot of forest there as well. Georgia, as well. And Louisiana, which is great. And what's interesting, too, is that like, with this type of answer, and this type of AI bot, you can actually talk to it as if it's human beings. So you can ask more questions about like, well, what does that mean to be fully refundable? Or it could you find me a state that has like a better, you know, return on, you know, above the line crew. So it's exciting that this basically is part of our experience. So yeah, that's our third tool. I think what's cool about that AJ

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is like that mincer here also gives you a link to the compare those states as well. So like, you can really have a conversation with this thing. Dig into the nuance of what is fully refundable. What is a credit, what is a grant, give me the deep like, it really is surprising how useful this can be just as a kind of touch point to dig into further information.

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7:59  

Totally. And like with everything, we build at Wrapbook, whether you've seen our product, or just like kind of played around with our resources, we love to integrate everything with each other. So like, for example, just like you said, Cameron, you could literally take this information and go right to that compare page and start comparing the different incentives side by side. So we're really excited about making everything extremely interconnected. So it's just so easy. So that way, the incentive processes and so laborious. And the last tool I'll show everyone is our state incentive map. So what we've developed here is we have a map that has this color coded based on you know, the different types of incentives, you can see here we have, we've identify which ones are credit rebate combos, which ones are fully transferable tax credits, you know, which states have no incentives as of right now. So it's great, it's a great way to kind of look at a moment's glance, but the cool thing I'll say is that, let's click into California for a second. So in California, you might know that there's a lot of other places within California that also offer incentives. So what's really cool about these pages is we actually show secondary incentives is what we're calling them. So you could explore what San Francisco is offering currently within California. So that's awesome. So once you click into a state, you can look at local incentives as well. And every single page has the same information, which is what is the basics of the incentive? You know, what am I going to get money back on? And where also things like, Do you need a screen credit? You know, things about withholding funding caps for the incentive? We also talked about Project criteria, like what are the specifics your project needs? I will say, with all of our data on our site, it's definitely you know, only tells half the story when it comes to incentive. Because with incentives when you when you talk about like your project, what is the project about like, you know, how, what is the breakdown of your crew and things like you know, even diversity and storytelling can come play an important part and whether or not you could be eligible for an incentive. So that's all here. Also, we also tell you how to apply as well. And like I mentioned before, we have contacts to all the film offices and all these pages. So even if you just want to get in contact with the Film Office, the Wrapbook production incentive center is exactly where you want to start. So yeah, we're super We're excited with these tools. And you know, I mean, I don't know if you talk about this on the podcast that much, but our Wrapbook newsletter is a great way to stay up to date on all the different changes like as of right now we have more exciting changes coming to the center, so it's totally up to date for the production community.

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10:14  

That's awesome. AJ, thank you so much for sharing and we're excited to get this out into people's hands. Thanks for being On Production.

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10:21  

Of course. Thanks for having me, Cameron.