Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker in 2022

Big Cities (continued)

1. Albuquerque

This marks the fourth year in a row that this New Mexico metropolis has claimed the title as the best place to live and work as a moviemaker in North America.

And for good reason: production spend during the fiscal year of 2021 surpassed spending in the 2019 fiscal year by over $100 million. “Estimated spend for fiscal year 2021 was $500 million,” Cyndy McCrossen, the city’s film liaison, tells MovieMaker. “Fiscal year 2022 is at pace to continue that upward trend.” The production boom is breathing new life into the entire city, including a budding film tourism business to satisfy visitors’ curiosity as to where huge television hits like Stranger Things and Breaking Bad were filmed. It’s also helping ancillary businesses like Crafty Apes — a full-service special effects company that opened a 2,000-square-foot facility recently — and Keslow Camera, a camera rental house based in Los Angeles that opened an office in Albuquerque. Netflix is a huge driver behind this growth. The streaming giant bought ABQ Studios in 2018, pledging to spend $1 billion in the state, and furthered that commitment with another billion-dollar-pledge in 2020. This year, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham celebrated the opening of NBCUniversal’s New Mexico Production Studio in Albuquerque after the ribbon-cutting ceremony was cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic. “We are not just making movies here. We are a movie industry hub for the United States and the world,” Grisham told local paper The Santa Fe New Mexican. The governor’s support of the film industry echoes a sentiment McCrossen expressed to MovieMaker: “Albuquerque is a movie town. The city government and the citizens themselves take great pride in the industry and culture of film.”

State officials, like Cabinet Secretary Alicia J. Keyes and New Mexico Film Office director Amber Dodson, support the booming business by actively encouraging talent to relocate to the state. Michael D. Jones, an Albuquerque-based producer and the founder of Silver Heart Productions, tells MovieMaker, “I was scouting a movie in ABQ when Alicia Keyes and Amber Dodson personally asked me to move to New Mexico. They said they needed someone with my experience, so I had nothing to lose.” He adds: “I could no longer afford to live in the Bay Area, so I bought a brand-new model home across the street from Netflix. And then COVID hit and my movies were stalled.” But that freeze has thawed, and Jones is back in business in a big way, telling MovieMaker he recently completed a feature called Robots, shot in the area with stars Shailene Woodley and Jack Whitehall. “It was great using as many New Mexico locals and locations. I’m excited about the next opportunities in 2022 as we have about three movies lined up. I appreciate the vast diverse looks of New Mexico, and how easy it is working with the state and local film office.”

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