Hays Film Board hosts location workshop

HAYS COUNTY FILM ADVISORY BOARD

The Hays County Film Advisory Board hosted the “Lights! Camera! Community!” workshop to provide an overview of location marketing as well as insights into regional film production from industry professionals.

“Today’s workshop is all about locations,” said Anita Aznet Collins, Chair of the Hays County Film Advisory Board, in her opening remarks. “It’s how to put your business or your residence on a location hub so that when film production companies come into town, they have a database to go to with all these different places that they could film.”

Collins is a San Marcosbased screenwriter and filmmaker. In addition to her work with the HCFAB, founded in 2022, she has served on the San Marcos Arts Commission and supported the San Marcos Cinema Club and the Lost River Film Festival. The Texas Film Commis- sion awarded Collins with the Community Builder Award in 2024.

The workshop featured three panels, each with a different perspective of the local film industry. The “Film Friendly” discussion featured tourism representatives from throughout Hays County talking about how their communities attract production companies and work with them to facilitate filming.

The workshop also included the “Location Scouts and Location Managers” panel, with insights, stories and tips from industry professionals. To wrap up the workshop, representatives from the Austin and Texas film commissions provided an overview of industry incentives and the thriving motion picture industry in Central Texas.

The ”Film Friendly” panel featured tourism representatives from the five major population centers of Hays County: Sarah Smith - San Marcos; Victoria Vargas Kyle; Pam King - Dripping Springs; Lysa Gonzalez - Buda; and Michelle Woods - Wimberley.

Smith, the Marketing Specialist at Visit San Marcos, discussed the City’s enthusiasm for working with film productions, helping them to find the right location and navigate the process of setting up a shoot.

“If you have the perfect place in mind… we can help you solve that puzzle,” Smith said. “We’re happy to help piece that together. We know our community super well.”

San Marcos has many great film locations, including area schools and parks, according to Smith. However, flexibility can be key in securing a location.

“The San Marcos Academy, the San Marcos Consolidated ISD and Texas State University, are all just begging for people to utilize their spaces when they’re empty, especially the San Marcos Academy,” she said. “In the school districts during the summers, they’re always like, if you need a gym, if you need a classroom, the library, whatever is yours.”

And while popular parks and recreational areas are in high demand as film sets, less-visited parks can provide more availability and flexibility for a shoot, she said.

Smith also said that while San Marcos doesn’t charge an application fee for location permits, she asks that film productions let her know where and when they will be filming.

Collins said another one of the advantages of filming in San Marcos is the close proximity of a wide range of location options. “When we were filming in San Marcos, my AD (Assistant Director) said that she loved filming here because it was almost like working on a studio set because everything was so close, so we filmed one scene and it took 15 minutes to get to the next location.”

Event attendee Andre Evrenos, an independent filmmaker and San Marcos realtor, agreed that San Marcos is the ideal place to make a film.

“It has all the things of a big city without being a big city. If you need to get across Austin, you’re looking at an hour drive. From a production standpoint, it just eats up a ton of time transporting things. You’re competing with way more folks for the same spaces, for the same caterers, and you probably have to schedule way further in advance. San Marcos is a lot smaller community, and so you’re more easily able to access that stuff.”

During the second panel, professional location scout Chris Hilsabeck confirmed that the proximity of sets is important, but so is the availability of resources such as lodging and other infrastructure support necessary for a film production.

“Is there enough parking around your house or your building or your business to accommodate all the trucks coming in through your house? Do you have other things in the house that are advantageous to the film production? Are there rooms that they can use to set up a temporary office for the producer? Is there a room that’s a spare room that you can set up as a makeup and hair facility so that they don’t have to pull in a trailer?” he said.

Hilsabeck’s production scout credits include “The Long Game,” “The Alto Nights,” “Bones and All,” and “The Stand.”

Michelle Lipscomb, a professional location manager based in Kyle, said that films are not necessarily looking for a location that is an exact match to the production that they are scouting, but one which can be adapted to meet their needs, preferably in an area with production incentives. She noted that she helped to make Louisiana resemble the Middle East for the “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” movie, primarily because of the incentives and cheaper cost, even though the production had to build extensive sets.

“We’re looking for houses, restaurants, courthouses, police departments, schools, nurseries,” Lipscomb said. “There’s all kinds of locations that we’re looking for. And trust me, we can transform anything to make it Hollywood glitter… We like to keep our locations close together, but there’s so much variety that we’re looking for. And each and every one of you have something to offer.”

Lipscomb also stressed that residents, businesses and homeowners planning to list their locations with film production hubs should take daylight photos which accurately reflect their properties, regardless of the condition they are in.

From the Texas Film Commission guidelines for location photos: “Take multiple photos, from multiple angles of each location you are submitting. A single photo of a location will not ‘sell’ a location or adequately show filmmakers all that the location has to offer. … think big picture and wide angle shots… and don’t focus on people, pets, events or details.”

Different types of movies seek out different types of locations, Lipscomb said. “Zombie movies may be looking for run down houses rather than pristine homes.”

Lipscomb shared an example of one owner making unwanted changes to her house after it was chosen for a film production.

“We were filming “Premonition” with Sandra Bullock, and the director fell in love with a house. The woman got so excited that we were coming to town that she painted her house. She redid things on the inside. She didn’t tell anybody.

“So when we brought the director in to do our tech scout, they’re looking at us going, ‘What just happened? And she said, ‘Well, I knew y’all were coming, and I thought I would just redo the floors and the walls.’ However the peeling walls were what attracted the director to the house in the first place.

“So what happens?” Lipscomp said. “We still film there. But guess what we did? We peeled the paint and we put in some dirty carpet.”

Both Hilsabeck and Lipscomb stressed that film productions are responsible for repairing any damage to a location and for returning the house to the same condition they found it in, or in many cases, better condition.

The Film Commission panel wrapped up the Location Workshop, with Texas Film Commission Production Specialist Alex Payne and Kim Le-Blanc, Film Marketing Manager for the Austin Film Commission. Both stressed the importance of registering locations on Commission websites to take advantage of the booming film industry in the Central Texas area.

LeBlanc said the Austin Film Commission regularly promotes Hays County as a leading destination for film, television and commercial production. She also encouraged filmmakers to sign up on their website for grants and incentives, which can include everything from student film stipends to hotel sales tax exemptions for larger productions.

Payne said one of the big attractions of basing film productions in Texas is instant cash rebates rather than the tax incentives available in other states, which are often not paid out until years after the completion of a production.

Another important incentive is Texas Senate Bill 22, passed in July of 2025, a film industry incentive bill which establishes a $300 million fund, renewable biennially through 2035 — to attract film productions to the state, according to Payne.

Although the specifics for the distribution of this fund are still being worked out, to qualify at least 60% of a film project must be completed in Texas, and 35% of the paid crew/cast must be Texas residents, according to Payne. He added that productions would receive an extra 2.5% incentive for projects filming in rural areas, at historic sites, or for productions with 5% or more veterans on crew.

“The Senate bill increases the maximum grant rebate to 31% of qualified in-state spending. Our state’s program jumped from 22.5% to up to 31% rebate, which is big jump,” LeBlanc said.

The Senate Bill gives the Texas film industry the ability to beat out other states for film productions, LeBlanc said.

“Consistency of investment has been our missing puzzle piece,” she said. “We’ve always had the crew base, we’ve always had the diversity of locations and we’ve always had the hospitality.”