Wide-Angle Midwest: Getting into Illinois

Due to its accessibility to new filmmakers, relatively low production costs, and a reputation for creative indie scripts, horror is a common choice for some filmmakers first foray into the studio film market. With that comes a choice, where to film? Do you rent a studio backlot, try for a single set or single location production, or try for something on a greater scale? The obvious answer may be to do whatever you can afford, but which among these options is most affordable? Many filmmakers, like David Prior and his debut film The Empty Man, or Andrew Douglas with his remake film The Amityville Horror, choose the Midwest as their filming grounds. This wasn’t just a monetary decision either, the locations were chosen for their versatility and comfortable feel to a wide audience.

The greatest incentive, aside from the greater demographic ready to the “flyover states”, is a massive thirty percent tax credit provided by the state of Illinois for film productions. No matter your budget, a tax credit of that size significantly garnishes your production’s coffers. This allows filmmakers, even those starting on their first studio productions, to use familiar locales at a fraction of the cost of a studio lot or similar locations in places like Vancouver or the Pacific Northwest. This credit not only assists filmmakers pursuing cost-effective shooting locations, it garnishes the state coffers as well. Even as recently as 2021, the state has shown a meteoric rise in film revenue.

Neither of the two films performed excessively well, with Empty Man failing to break its production budget and Amityville gaining a reputation for mediocrity despite its decent returns. This isn’t to insult or demean the crew or filmmakers involved in the productions, they were simply not well received. At the end of the day, a shooting location and a reasonable budget can’t guarantee success in the entertainment market. Originality and a solid marketing budget reign supreme, but even if you don’t succeed critically, you can still end up as a point of pride for some small town and your cult following, still spoken about in high praise in headlines over fifteen years later.

These films show an obvious financial benefit to those looking to break into the entertainment business or those looking to make their mark without making a significant mark on their investor’s pocketbooks. You gain a setting that most audience members understand at an innate level, you get a significant return on not only your production but your box office (provided you market correctly, looking at you, Empty Man) as well. There isn’t a considerable downside to filming in the Midwest unless you have an allergy to the spring pollen like a certain filmmaker.