The rise of regional film production centers in North America, 1984–1997

Abstract

During the later half of the 1980s through the mid 1990s the American film production industry experienced significant growth due to an increase in the production of television shows. Because of this growth, the economic geography of film production changed dramatically. I examine how the film production market has changed over the period 1984–1997, using a modified version of Storper and Christopherson's (1985) film market model of developed centers, second-order centers, edge-centers and occasional sites. I modify this model by including two new factors in the locational decision process: one, the effects of increased television production on the film market model; and two, the availability of different types of landscapes within regional film production centers.