Columbus Film Office expands beyond movies. How local creatives can get involved

The Columbus Film Office is expanding its scope beyond traditional film. The first step? Getting other creators in on the ground floor.

The film office hosted the Columbus Creators Mixer on Feb. 19 in collaboration with Georgia Entertainment, facilitating conversation and connection between storytellers across the creative spectrum, including gaming, music, podcasting and social media content creation. The event featured networking opportunities and roundtable discussions with local creatives.

Joel Slocumb, the Columbus Film Office commissioner, told the Ledger-Enquirer the broadened focus comes from national trends in the film industry.

“Georgia, as well as other states in the U.S., has undergone a shift in the film industry, where a lot of the films have moved overseas due to tax incentives,” Slocumb said. “So, looking at the film and entertainment industry, we realize that, locally, we have some filmmakers. We also realized that we have some folks who are in music and in gaming. We have folks that are wanting to do podcasts. There’s just an array of different areas. They all follow some of the same pathways to get to the end product.”

The event focused on how to become a storyteller. Georgia Entertainment president Jezlan Moyet is impressed by this local approach to producing more opportunities for a wide range of creators.

“Our partnership with Film Columbus is truly unique,” Moyet said. “They have really embraced public and private collaboration in support of their local creatives, and as I said earlier, in widening the lens, they want to make sure that they’re opening the doors, sharing their resources with all local creators and mastering storytelling. … Columbus is really leading by example statewide in their abilities to do that.”

The mixer also gave more information about the Local Filmmakers Grant Program, which opened for applications in January and offers five grants of $10,000 each.

Applications were being accepted through the end of February. For larger productions, the office also offers an incentive of up to $300,000 to attract filmmakers from outside the Columbus area.