By Nathan Duke
The Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting will launch several citywide programs during the next year that will allow Queens residents to take part in training and mentoring programs in the entertainment industry, an agency spokeswoman said.
The initiatives follow increased participation in city and state tax incentives that have allowed for more films and television shows to be shot in the borough, she said.
The office, created in the late 1960s by Mayor John Lindsay, currently operates a production-assistant training program and will add a mentorship program in 2009, said Julianne Cho, the agency's associate commissioner.
The agency's production-assistant program includes four weeks of training sessions, in which attendees learn to apply for permits and work in production offices. The program will also provide two years of job placement for participants on city productions.
The office will also undertake an initiative in late 2009 that would teach participants how to do a specific job within the entertainment industry. The program would accept approximately 25 people.
“It would be one of a kind on the East Coast because it would put young people at the entry level on the road to learning a craft and getting them into unions,” Cho said.
Cho said 98 percent of the participants in the office's production-assistant program are minorities.
“We want to introduce more diversity into the work force that reflects the breakdown of New York City,” she said.
And that search for diversity could draw more film and television productions to Queens, where Silvercup Studios and Kaufman Astoria Studios, two of the city's largest production facilities, are planning to expand, Cho said.
“There are great, ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Queens,” she said. “To help accommodate the new productions coming in, Silvercup and Kaufman Astoria have been an integral part of the industry. Productions are more and more seeing options opening up to them to shoot in Queens.”
Marybeth Ihle, an agency spokeswoman, said hit television show “Ugly Betty,” which recently moved its locales from Los Angeles to the city, is a prime example of a production that takes advantage of the borough's multiple cultures.
The show, which follows a young Latina from Queens who lacks social skills, is set in Jackson Heights and is currently shooting its interior sequences at Silvercup in Long Island City.
Other shows, including “Gossip Girl” and “30 Rock,” have used studio lots and streets in the borough as their backdrops.
Cho said “Law and Order” was the only episodic television show to shoot in the city 15 years ago. But city and state tax incentives, eligible for films and television shows that complete at least 75 percent of their production in the five boroughs, have boosted television production in the city, where 18 shows currently shoot, she said.
A number of feature films, including a remake of the 1974 thriller “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3,” which filmed in Woodside and Astoria, and the Jackson Heights-based independent film “7 to the Palace,” have also filmed in the borough. “Entre Nos,” an independent film about a Colombian family that ends up in Queens, most recently shot in Corona, Flushing and Jackson Heights.
But Cho said the influx of television shows has been most beneficial to the city, enabling western Queens' studios to expand and increasing revenue for hotels, restaurants, car services, florists, dry cleaners and other businesses who provide services to the productions.
“Television provides a bigger slice of the pie economically because they roll over season to season,” Cho said. “We have been seeing so many new pilots and shows and facilities in Queens have been expanding to accommodate. This lifts all boats.”
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