For most people, the movies hold a special place in their hearts, or often it’s one particular movie or another that strikes a chord.
“I’m a huge ‘Jaws’ fan,” said Martin Eckert, Jr., who serves as Florence Township’s director of recreation and their economic development liaison. “My son, my brothers and I went to Martha’s Vineyard to celebrate the 50th anniversary (of ”Jaws”). That island is in a way, frozen in time. A lot of the shooting locations are pretty untouched.”
Eckert, who also serves as the township’s liaison to the state’s Film Ready New Jersey program, discussed his trip and the visceral experience he had when visiting the shooting locations for his favorite movie.
“Film lives on forever,” he said. “We thought that was just something special for a little blue-collar community to be part of something like that.”
That feeling is at the core of Eckert’s enthusiasm for his town’s involvement with becoming certified with Film Ready New Jersey.
The program helps local municipalities and county governments ready themselves for potential filming opportunities in their communities through a certification process and marketing efforts.
“As film and television production continues to break records in New Jersey, local communities need to be prepared to handle the unique needs of the industry,” said Jon Crowley, executive director of New Jersey’s Motion Picture and Television Commission, in a recent news release.
“The Film Ready Program establishes statewide consistency and provides expert guidance on everything from permitting to public safety management, strengthening the state’s industry leadership as more producers choose the Garden State for their next big production.”
In Florence, Eckert now serves as the point person for any potential film productions looking to come to town, after he personally went through the state’s program.
“They were wonderful to deal with,” Eckert said of the state film office. “They walked us through the process. They helped us with our ordinance language. They actually even sent photographers out to shoot public property. They know what a production company may look for.”
Part of the process involves creating an inventory of potential shooting locations in the certified town, along with lists of other possible assets for production companies, like hotels, restaurants and other shops.
Eckert said he believes production opportunities are increasing in New Jersey due to its proximity to both New York and Philadelphia, as well as developments like the coming Netflix studios at the central Jersey shore.
“South Jersey is unique in that there’s some open space and it’s easy to jump to different areas without a lot of effort because of the different arteries that we have connecting our towns,” he said.
Eckert said that almost immediately after completing the film certification process last summer, his office was contacted by a film crew from an independent production company out of New York looking for a location to shoot a horror film. It wasn’t going to be about a killer shark off the beaches of Amity Island, but rather a different kind of terror in the woods of Florence Township.
Eckert said they were working on a zombie movie and had a planned filming location fall through at the last minute and they had to act fast.
“It was so exciting that someone was interested,” he said. “They were the most professional people. They were so polite, and when they left, it was like they were never there. Everything was cleaned up. Nothing was disturbed. And it was a pleasure to work with them.”
For Sean Sepsey, in his role as economic development director for Salem County, the potentially large financial impact coming from film productions, coupled with a minimal disturbance for residents, is what he finds most appealing.
“It’s a very rural county,” Sepsey said of Salem. “A lot of our localities don’t want high-density development. But you have to be creative and find ways to bring resources and money to the county.”
New Jersey Film Ready now has 58 communities certified through the program, with more currently working their way through the process. Salem is one of only five counties in the state to become certified – the first in South Jersey.
Sepsey personally went through the certification process and now acts as the liaison to the program and to any potential film productions.
“They just want one point of contact who knows what they’re going to ask for, who can get them the answers and point them in the right direction,” Sepsey said of film companies looking for a place to shoot.
Sepsey said an HGTV show recently reached out about filming an episode, and that while everything was to be shot on private property, his office served as the point of contact for the network.
He said that Salem opted to create an official code of conduct for filming, rather than adopting a film ordinance, and though they could have, Sepsey said the county chose to not put in any fee structures for filming permits.
“We want to make it as easy as possible,” he said.
Instead of trying to rake in money through cumbersome fees, Sepsey said the real economic benefit of a film production comes by way of the money spent with local businesses when a film comes to town. As an example, he pointed to the Steven Spielberg movie that filmed in Cape May County last spring.
“In a six-day shoot, it brought in $400,000 of local-spend towards hotel rooms and $150,000 to $250,000 for food,” Sepsey said of Spielberg’s coming sci-fi flick “Disclosure Day,” which is due out in June. “That’s six days of disruption to the residents, but after that, they pack up and go away, and in the meantime, they just provided a short-term economic boost to our hotels, our restaurants, our local establishments.”
Spielberg’s latest effort may have stayed a little more inland in Cape May County for their film shoots, but the resort city of Cape May itself hasn’t been a stranger to recent blockbuster activity either.
One spring earlier, Cape May played host to filming for the Bob Dylan biopic “No Direction Home.”
Kacie Rattigan, the city’s director of civic affairs, recreation, tourism and marketing, said she had already made efforts to solidify the city’s procedures for dealing with film productions, but that film’s presence in town made the desire to enter the Film Ready program even stronger.
Rattigan said Cape May is now nearing the end of the process, and said she’s looking forward to even further productions coming to the city.
“The program I feel has been awesome,” Rattigan said. “The workshop was beneficial. The people who have been affiliated with the program have been great. It’s been very informative. It’s great to continue to showcase Jersey like they are. I can’t speak more highly about the program. It’s just been phenomenal.”
Especially for a resort town like Cape May, Rattigan said that on top of any direct, immediate economic benefits to the city and its businesses, films and shows being shot in the city also benefit their tourism efforts through the publicity generated by their presence.
“The more we receive by way of film, we get more attention by way of tourism, too,“ she said.
As for that zombie movie shot in Florence, from what he understands, Eckert said the film is currently in post production and that the company hopes to enter the finished product into film festivals once it’s complete, hopefully sometime this year.
He said he’s reached out to them in hopes of possibly scheduling a screening of the film in Florence, so that locals there can see their town on the big screen once it’s done.
“I think it’s a unique experience to have a production group in your town, to see it up close, to have that interaction where you’re sitting there watching a television show, a commercial or a film, and your community center is in the backdrop, or your park,” Eckert said.
“You never know. Maybe there’s a need for extras and it’s a production that could offer people an opportunity to be on the other side of the camera. It’s just really a neat experience.”
Last Picture: Timothée Chalamet in A COMPLETE UNKNOWN. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
Movie Poster for Disclosure Day courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Other photos courtesy of Martin Eckert and Florence Township.
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