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Tampa Bay ready for close-ups
For several reasons, particularly a deep pool of technical talent, the region is getting ever more popular with filmmakers.
By JANET ZINK
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 20, 2002
Ellen Fiss's decorating tastes tend toward traditional.
But for one day in April her Hyde Park house was outfitted in retro 70s splendor.
Fiss had loaned her home to producers of a television commercial for Publix. They filled it with brown and orange furniture and allowed a family of actors in vintage clothing to take up residence.
Fiss's Craftsman bungalow is a popular spot for shooting advertisements. In the six months Fiss has lived there with her husband and two children, Publix has filmed two commercials, and an insurance company shot one.
Before she moved in, the house was the site for commercials for Wal-Mart and the Florida Citrus Council.
"The house has a lot of wide open spaces and a lot of windows and natural light, and it has a pretty traditional look. It hasn't been upgraded a great deal," Fiss says. "It can look like a grandmother's house."
Plus, Fiss says, the home is on a corner so there's plenty of parking for the trucks that bring in equipment.
"It's a pretty major production when they come in," she says.
When the commercials were shot, Fiss had to leave her house for the day, but in return she received a check and a minor home improvement -- the set designers dressed up the front of her refrigerator with sheets of Formica. They could have been removed, but Fiss opted to keep them.
Hyde Park, where Fiss lives, is a favorite neighborhood for film productions, says Tampa Bay Film Commissioner Edie Emerald, who markets the Bay area to Hollywood. It's popular because the houses and streets can look like "Anywhere, USA," she says.
Typically, location scouts -- the people who choose a place to shoot a commercial -- want generic neighborhoods. They like traditional architecture with white picket fences and no palms.
"They don't want a Florida twist unless it's for orange juice," Emerald says.
Plant City, with its old houses and small-town air, is also popular, she says. Ybor City's brick streets and wrought iron balconies can double as New Orleans. The rural parts of Odessa are transformed into Midwestern farmland.
Producers prefer Odessa because the weather in Florida is milder than that of the Midwest. And Tampa has a solid crew base to support them, Emerald says.
The technical talent in Tampa keeps people coming back, she says, noting that director Tim Burton, who shot his 1990 movie Edward Scissorhands in Lutz, is once again considering the area for a film.
Emerald maintains a location library of thousands of photos for scouts to flip through so they don't have to drive around Tampa trying to find the perfect setting.
"We have tons and tons of people who submit photos of their houses or businesses to us," Emerald says.
They do it for the money -- homeowners can make anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars -- and because they get a thrill out of being a part of the glamor of show business.
The thrill can wear thin.
Bob Glaser's Hyde Park home was featured in television commercials for Eckerd's, Tide laundry detergent, and the Minnesota Association of Realtors, but he says he has taken his house out of the spotlight.
"It was fun to participate in it," Glaser said. "But then after we got through those fun things, it starts to become a little tedious."
It can take days to film a commercial and homeowners may have to leave at the crack of dawn and stay away until late at night, if they're allowed to return at all.
"There can be no noise and no one around the house," Glaser says.
Usually, the filmmakers will clear all the furniture out of the home and create their own set. They typically carry a $1-million insurance policy to cover any damages that might occur, but both Glaser and Fiss say their houses were returned to them in their original condition.
Sometimes, they're returned in even better shape.
When the National Football League created a tailgate party in Culbreath Bayou for a commercial shot last spring, they planted flowers and painted the fence in front of one of the homes they used.
Commercials, music videos and infomercials are the bread and butter of Tampa's film industry, says Emerald. In addition to Publix and the NFL, Nike and Kodak have used Tampa locations as a backdrop for TV ads. Home Depot and Adidas have recently scouted here.
But the biggest financial boon comes from a television series, Emerald says. Those are hard to get in a city that doesn't have a huge sound stage. Still, it has happened. The 1996 series Second Noah was filmed in Tampa for a year, mostly in a home on Bayshore Boulevard.
Producers pumped more than $1-million into the local economy, Emerald says.
Some of Tampa's parks were transformed into jungles for the Sheena, Queen of the Jungle TV series, although most of that production was based in Orlando.
Recently, Emerald brought in 10 producers and directors from the Chicago and New York markets and took them on a three-day tour of locations they can't re-create elsewhere -- the University of Tampa, Ybor City, downtown Tampa, Bayshore Boulevard, Ballast Point and the Port of Tampa.
She got a positive response and says she has high hopes that Tampa/St. Petersburg, the state's fifth largest market for filmmaking, will continue to gain in popularity.
"In Hillsborough County people are becoming more educated about film production," she says. "That makes it easier for us."
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