City works to earn Film Friendly designation

City works to earn Film Friendly designation News Staff Tue, 06/11/2024 - 4:52 pm Breckenridge Mayor Bob Sims (shown swearing in for another term as mayor) said Strawn was recently used as a filming location and brought a lot of outside visitors to the city. Photo/Mike Williams By Mike Williams news@breckenridgeamerican.com As more television and other media productions choose Texas as a location for filming, the city of Breckenridge has approved measures to invite those productions and earn a Film Friendly designation from the Texas Film Commission (TFC). City Manager Cynthia Northrop said becoming a Film Friendly certified community is a low-cost step to contribute and promote economic development.  The Film Friendly Texas Program is a program that connects media industry professionals with community liaisons to provide local expertise. The program aims to create a network for fostering media production by showing the media and film industry that those with the designation have taken steps and are actively recruiting productions to film in it’s city. There are three steps the city has to take to be certified – attend a training workshop held by TFC, pass administratively enforceable filming guidelines and submit photos of potential filming locations. “We may get some stuff, we may not, but we’ll be on the map,” Northrop said. “(City Secretary) Jessica (Sutter) and I did attend a day and a half seminar down in New Braunfels a couple of weeks ago so we’ve got that box ticked off. Of course when you guys pass this then we’ll be submitting five photos, which we have, and then we’ll encourage the community to submit other ones.” Sutter said any local business or community member can submit their property for use in filming.“If businesses put in their pictures and offer up their businesses to film there, they get income from that,” she said. “As these film producers come in they’ll pay them to use their facilities or homes, private homes, just about anything in the city.” Northrop said writer and director Taylor Sheridan has a lot of projects and has filmed in locations close to Breckenridge. Sheridan, who resides in Weatherford, is most recently known as a co-creator of the Paramount Network television series “Yellowstone”, along with its prequels “1883” and “1923”. Last year, Sheridan filmed scenes of his show “1883: A Bass Reeves Story” in Strawn. Last month, Sheridan filmed a plane crash scene in Graham for his upcoming series “Landman”, a show about West Texas oil rigs, starring Billy Bob Thornton. “When Strawn was doing its filming last year I don’t know how much money it brought in, but it brought in a lot of people in town,” Mayor Bob Sims said. “So they were eating and spending money …and it was neat to watch.” The Breckenridge City Commission approved an ordinance during its meeting Monday, June 4 which creates guidelines for filming in the city.  Northrop said the ordinance and designation meets one of the city’s strategic goals of promoting economic development, tourism and Breckenridge as a destination. According to the new ordinance, commercials or episodic television shows must submit an application to the city in a minimum of two business days prior to filming or any substantial activity related to the project. Feature films require a minimum of five days.  If filming requires any closures inside the city, the production must submit an application at least two months prior to the requested closure. The application must include the schedule for the production and provide the approved schedule to owners, tenants and residents of each property in the affected neighborhood or area where filming is to occur. All costs incurred for city equipment and personnel use must be paid for by the production company within 10 days of being invoiced. The production is responsible for professional cleaning, street sweeping and/or sanitation services required upon the completion of work and will be responsible for any damages. Unless given special permissions, filming will only be allowed Monday through Friday from 7 a.m until 9 p.m. On Saturdays, Sundays and city-recognized holidays, filming is allowed from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. News Log in to post comments