Efforts continue to bring more movie projects to northeast Ohio

CLEVELAND - While northeast Ohio prepares to see some familiar sites featured in two new motion pictures due out in October, the Greater Cleveland Film Commission continues its focus on luring more feature films to shoot here.

"Alex Cross" hits theaters Oct. 19, with "Fun Size" following a week later Oct., 26. Both films were shot in and around Cleveland last summer taking advantage of the $30 million in tax incentives the state had offered over a two year period.

A study released in March by Cleveland State University found the program was a success returning $1.20 on every $1 of tax incentive offered.

The problem was the program became a victim of its own success so that when it came to the funds for incentives from July  2011 to July 2012, the money essentially was used up by mid-July of last year.

As a result, movie making in and around Cleveland was slower this year, but that didn’t mean the Greater Cleveland Film Commission’s Ivan Schwarz was any less busy.

"Because the funding dried up, I actually spent the last year lobbying to get our funding actually doubled this year,” said Schwarz. “So the governor signed the legislation in June and it takes a little while to get geared up and get people to know that we have money again."

Schwarz said in many ways he’s been busier this summer.

“You’re only as good as your last project,” he said.

“You constantly have to be out in front of people and in L.A. It’s out of sight, out of mind so I still go to L.A. maybe even more now, just to make sure that we leverage some of the success we had and remind people of what we can do for them.”

It doesn’t hurt that two movies shot here hit theaters in back-to-back weekends next month.

"It shows what we can do,” he said. “We have probably 15 projects right now that we're working on that have real, not just talking interest but a real interest in coming into the area."

"In the next couple of weeks we have several scouts coming out, we just had a bunch of people in town and it's getting really busy,” Schwarz said. “I bet you in the next few weeks hopefully we'll have some commitments which will be fun and exciting to talk about."