From what you read and see in the media, Nashville looks like it’s wall-to-wall music. Its music industry is still centered around Music Row, the Grand Ole Opry is located in the Music Valley area, and the commuter rail line is dubbed the Music City Star. But scratch the surface, and you’ll find a production community teeming with lighting designers and directors, video producers, staging specialists and projection poobahs. Music gets the headlines, but Nashville can push a major-league tour out the door or pull a television production in without putting up any help-wanted notices at IATSE Locals 306 or 728.
That’s what Ben Jumper, owner of Nashville’s Soundcheck rehearsal facility, was thinking when he decided over a year ago to give that kind of talent the same kind of locus that Soundcheck offers to the live-sound mixers and touring media technologists who support the artists as they prepare for their tours in the 168,000 square feet of rehearsal space Soundcheck offers to national country and rock touring artists.
“Music is just one part of a bigger spectrum of entertainment genres we have in Nashville,” he says. Jumper aims to fill in much of the rest of the spectrum with a new $16 million facility with two major spaces that total over 44,800 square feet. The building’s 70-foot ceiling is also impressive; it is designed to be capable of hoisting 180,000 pounds of flown rigging and able to service both the full production components of arena-sized tours, including lighting, video and projection as well as their accompanying sound systems. There will also be sound stages for film and television productions, with broadcast lighting, green rooms, a commissary, dance stages and other accouterments of media production. What will be known as Soundcheck Third Coast Studios is expected to break ground by January 2014 and be ready to open in Q1 of 2015.
The Big Jump
It’s big leap for Jumper, but it’s been on his mind for a while. He was sidetracked when he acquired another music and production rehearsal facility in Burbank in 2009, even as he was opening a third Soundcheck in Austin, Texas. Earlier this year, he pulled out of the Burbank venture, which is still operated by his erstwhile partners, to redirect his attention to the two other Soundcheck locations. He’s also focusing on a smaller facility that opened recently in Houston, and to get the Third Coast facility under way.
Jumper is not the only member of Nashville’s entertainment industry to be fascinated by Nashville, the ABC television episodic that the network renewed in mid-May for a second season. Like many others, he’s not particularly enthralled by a narrative that owes more to soap opera than William Faulkner, but like most in that cohort, he enjoys the music, produced by Grammy Award winner T-Bone Burnett, and sees it as the connection Nashville, the city, needs to make to allow it to be seen as a legitimate media production and post production destination, something that’s eluded the city despite several high-priced tries. Already, much of Nashville’s music is produced in the city, and many of its locations are used for shooting the show. Jumper says that’s a string that leads to a much larger market for what the city’s media technology infrastructure could offer.
Signs of Improvement
Jumper is financing the investment in Third Coast using a combination of bank financing, tax credits and third-party investment, based on his belief that the talent is here and that the region offers not only plenty of location opportunity, but also a low overall cost of doing business. What he hasn’t seen yet is a proactive stance on the part of the state to encourage more film and television productions to go there to work. The Tennessee Film, Entertainment & Music Commission has been chronically underfunded, and a majority Republican legislature and Republican governor have shown little inclination to change that anytime soon, above and beyond a relatively paltry additional $2 million added to Commission’s film incentive program last year. In one hopeful sign, changes to the program now allow projects with budgets of more than $200,000 to be eligible to receive grants equal to 25 percent of their qualified Tennessee expenditures. Previously, the combined grant and tax credit system awarded a 17 percent grant and 15 percent refundable tax credit only to productions with budgets over $1 million, according to the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. (Nashville, the show, was able to benefit from that.)
Jumper knows he’s up against more aggressive policies in states such as Louisiana, North Carolina and Georgia. But he’s also got a few rabbits in his hat. His Austin rehearsal facility has an arrangement in place to lease one or more of the adjacent hangars in the same complex that are already being used for film and television work in Texas, where the state Senate passed a budget bill this year that sets aside $22 million in general fund revenue to keep media production incentives in place. He’s also secured commitments of use for the new Nashville sound stage facility from production managers for music artists including Kenny Chesney, Reba McEntire and other artists, and he says he’s in discussions with several film and television productions, including Nashville, to use the new facility to shoot. In fact, he says, both planned rooms are already booked for the first 18 weeks after the facility opens.
Jumper has a few other levers — there are no rehearsal facilities on a par with Soundcheck in the region, much less the city; the rehearsal space at the downtown Bridgestone Arena lacks its own HVAC and other amenities. He’s seen sound stage facilities adapting to address both media and touring productions — Lady Gaga rehearsed for her current tour at Sony’s Los Angeles facility and Warner Bros. Burbank stages have been similarly used — so a business model has emerged. And Nashville’s central location to the rest of the country is another plus.
Soundcheck is more than its name implies. In addition to the Third Coast venture, the main facility also houses tenants including sales and service providers like video and projection company Moo TV, lighting company Christie Lites and tour staffing service Crew One Production. In short, the place is already a hub, one that becomes that much more attractive once the sound stages are ready. Jumper is convinced that the magic incantation “if you build it, they will come” will work for film and television production in Nashville. He’s betting big on it. It remains to be seen if the state is willing to help back that bet.
