There And Back Again: How W.Va.’s Film Office Is Back With A Mission

With a new Film Office under the Department of Economic Development reestablished in 2022, a bevy of unique and gorgeous filming locations and tax incentives on par with those offered in Georgia, a question hangs over the film industry of West Virginia: why hasn’t it gained more recognition in the public eye?

Listen to an interview with Max Bruce about his reporting.

Tijah Bumgarner had a passion for video cameras and making short videos from a young age. But she left West Virginia and headed for Los Angeles in 2004 where she discovered what the world of filmmaking could offer. 

After years of creating independent films, she saw the opportunities a film program in West Virginia could offer other aspiring filmmakers.

“I just want to tell these stories that have not been told before,” Bumgarner said, “To let kids know that their stories are important, the small stories are important and that you can change perspectives of what people think of your hometown, basically, or your state.”

A native of Meadow Bridge, Bumgarner had been trying to create a university film program since 2017, but recently found success due to changes in tax credits and renewed interest in video production at Marshall University’s College of Arts and Media.

The West Virginia Film Office is working to foster homegrown filmmakers by partnering with Marshall on the creation of a Bachelor’s Degree of Fine Arts in Filmmaking, making it the only university in the state to have this kind of program. 

After being dissolved in 2018, the film office was reinstated in 2022 by House Bill 2096. The bill also instituted credits totaling up to 31 percent back with no annual cap for various media productions in the Mountain State. The previous credit had been capped at an annual amount of $5 million and was deemed as providing “minimal economic impact” by a state Department of Commerce audit.

The 2018 vote to end the original tax credit passed in the West Virginia House 54-42 and the Senate agreed 28-2. The 2022 reinstatement bill, however, passed with an overwhelming majority in both chambers.

The current tax credit allows for productions of $50,000 or more to receive back 27 percent on local spending and both resident and nonresident labor on commercials, web series, documentaries, feature films, pilots, TV shows, music videos and more. There is also a potential 4 percent bonus available for production companies that employ 10 or more residents of West Virginia as full-time employees. All together that makes the maximum available credit 31 percent.

Individual tax incentives for film are different from state to state. Some offer tax credits towards productions, others offer cash rebates in special cases, while certain states provide benefits for individual crew members.

With the reinstatement of the tax credit for filmmakers, the film office located at the state Capitol Complex in Charleston reopened in April 2022. Dave Lavender has spearheaded the newly reestablished office under the Department of Economic Development. 

“My responsibilities are pretty much all encompassing as far as helping to do anything within the state of West Virginia to promote film and to promote filmmakers that are right here,” Lavender said. “To help build out the workforce and to also provide a wide range of services for production companies that are interested in filming in West Virginia, kind of like a concierge for the film industry.”

The office also offers a website that lets production companies browse a library of shooting locations within the state, a resource for finding crew members in all available positions and tax credit information through an industry sheet. 

It isn’t just the film office trying to showcase the talented people of West Virginia and what it has to offer. Nonprofit organization Shine on WV, founded by Jillian Carney-Howell, aims to shine a spotlight on Appalachian filmmakers and creatives.

Carney-Howell has a YouTube channel where she interviews Appalachians working in the field, and highlights their works. She said that while it may not be massively publicized, there are filmmakers, actors and other creative people from West Virginia and Appalachia, who are out there being successful, who should be getting more recognition for their successes.

“We know the historic ones,” said Carney-Howell. “We know Don Knotts and then we know the really famous ones like Jennifer Garner, but the smaller ones, we weren’t looking for it. So as a West Virginia audience, we just assumed it wasn’t possible. The second I switched my viewpoint and started looking for it, I started finding it.”

Shine on WV has featured a variety of people from different positions in the industry, both in and out of the region. One such person is Joe Strechay, a legally blind producer and consultant for blindness and low vision, who has worked on shows like Netflix’s Daredevil and Apple TV’s series See.

Strechay began losing his vision while in college and began to take a more critical look at how blindness and low vision were being portrayed in film and on television.

“We’re definitely moving in a more positive direction with regards to representation of people who are blind or low vision,” said Strechay. “I would say low vision is still not really represented in TV and film … but total blindness, for sure, we’re definitely in a much better place.”

His first major production was the Netflix series Daredevil, a blind lawyer by day who fights crime as a masked vigilante by night in the Marvel universe. Strechay was a consultant for both the child version of Matt Murdock, the series’ main character, as well as his adult counterpart, played by Charlie Cox. He remembers it at the time being just a cool experience while working another job. As more projects gradually started to come in from both Netflix and Apple TV, he began to see a full-time vocation. 

“I asked myself, ‘Is this a full time job?’ and they were like, ‘I think it is.’ I guess I need to quit my job then.” Strechay said. 

Strechay said he is excited for the new tax incentives that the state has rolled out.

“I have to say, our new tax credits are amazing. I’m pretty psyched about it. I’ve heard from other people outside of West Virginia; I’ve talked to friends from Canada who researched even filming here in West Virginia,” he said.

Strechay is one of the state’s native industry leaders, who are enthusiastic about the state’s new initiatives and hope that they could lead to the resurgence of business in the state, similar to what happened with Georgia in the 2010s when investments and a few very successful projects like AMC’s The Walking Dead turned the state into one of the nation’s top film destinations. In 2020, Georgia’s cumulative wages for film and television crews totaled $3.51 billion, the fifth highest in the nation according to the Motion Picture Association.

That same year, West Virginia’s film and television crews’ wages totaled only $118 million, but there was no tax incentive being offered, and the film office was still closed.

Another aspect of Georgia’s rise in popularity for filmmaking is the versatility of the state to showcase different types of environments, a benefit that West Virginia shares with the Peach State.

“Getting the word out about the locations that we have here might get people to consider it for a variety of projects,” said John Temple, a professor at West Virginia University (WVU) and screenwriter/filmmaker. “Obviously, there’s plenty of other mountainous states, but like, the mountains we have in West Virginia are different, you know … and there are places in West Virginia that are just untouched, or sort of look the way they used to.”

Temple’s most recent project is a feature film called Beatdown where large parts of the film were shot in Beckley, West Virginia in May 2023. The film will follow a boxing family in West Virginia.

“We were also really interested in showing a side of West Virginia that we’ve experienced that we don’t think makes it onto the screen very much,” Temple said. “The warmth of West Virginia, the humor of West Virginia, the beauty of West Virginia – all of those things.”

With the systems in place from the film office, the state’s versatility and the passionate community of Appalachian creatives, West Virginia has everything in place to show the world what the Mountain State has to offer.

Maxwell Bruce discussed his reporting on this story with Chris Schulz, West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s North Central/Morgantown reporter, in the July 22, 2024 episode of West Virginia Morning.