. Yet in spite of the newly expanded and recently extended Illinois Film Services Tax Credit—more on that later—Chicago can still go overlooked, writhing under the shadows of its siblings on the coasts.
Several of the key cast and crew members live in either Los Angeles or New York, yet their connections to Chicago run deep. “A lot of us have worked together before, especially on the production team,” Swinford says. “So it was an easy call to be like, this is a position we need, I’ve got the best person who can do this. And that’s consistently true for us in Chicago. It’s a very close-knit community of people who are ready to work and get their hands dirty . . .
“Chicago has been here, and it’s definitely here to stay, and it’s definitely continuing to grow,” saysMike Berg, the editor for. As someone involved in the postproduction process, Berg has a different perspective on the industry here. “The talent in this town on the post side is really great,” he says. “[But] even a lot of the shows that do some of their production in Chicago, a lot of them still don’t edit here, don’t finish here.” Though, as he points out, that might be changing.
“This is my little pet topic,” Tien says excitedly, “because I think more films should be made in Chicago. Fantastic films can be made in Chicago . . . we don’t have to bring in a production designer from somewhere else unless they are genuinely offering us a unique skill set, which is frequently not the case.”