When it comes to foreign film production, it's not so easy to enact tariffs on the service provided as it is on an imported product Dr. Peter Gregg, the digital media arts coordinator and associate professor and department chair in the Department of Emerging Media within the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas, told Spectrum News during an interview. Gregg discussed some of the complications of the possible tariffs and suggested ways that could incentivize film and television production in the United States.
From the story:
“At this point, it’s more like an idea or a concept than a policy, and so it’s tough to have an idea of what it might look like,” said Peter Gregg, a professor of emerging media at the University of St. Thomas. “How do you add a tariff to something that’s a service and not actually imported through customs?”
Gregg pointed out some viewers have high expectations for the quality of production that sometimes requires films and television crews to shoot outside the U.S.
“It isn’t quite like the way it used to be during the heyday of the studio system through the 1950s where you would shoot the entire film in a back lot or in the studio, you would go to the hills around California and pretend that it was Spain,” he explained. “There are qualities of the terrain, the landscape, the cities, the environments that the United States just doesn’t have. Like if you need a particular mountain range or you need a particular city, it’s easier to shoot in that city than to try to recreate it artificially.”
