The Oregon Production Investment Fund (“OPIF”) offers qualifying film or television productions spending more than $1 million in Oregon, a 20% cash rebate on production-related goods and services paid to Oregon vendors, and a 10% cash rebate of payrolled wages paid for work done in Oregon. OPIF is a capped annual fund: $14 million for July 1, 2020 - June 30, 2021 fiscal year.
A dedicated portion of the OPIF program is the Local Oregon Production Investment Fund (“L-OPIF”). L-OPIF provides rebates of 20% of goods and services and 10% of Oregon labor for projects by Oregon producers and crews who spend a minimum of $75,000, incentivizing up to the first $1 million of their spend. (Other requirements will apply.) In fiscal year 2019-2020, the L-OPIF fund was segregated as 7.5% of the overall OPIF fund, or approximately, $1,000,000. On its own, L-OPIF supported more than $5.7 million of production activity in the state, focusing on local crews and producers.
Another dedicated portion of the OPIF program is the Regional Oregon Production Investment Fund (“
R-OPIF”). ROPIF has two qualifying sections: 1) for productions basing themselves in Portland that produce 1 or more shooting days outside of a 30 mile zone from Burnside Bridge and 2) for productions that base the entirety of their production outside of the same 30 mile zone.
R-OPIF rebates costs directly associated with the travel outside of the zone for qualifying projects under (1) above or R-OPIF adds a further +10% to the OPIF rebate provided to projects qualifying under (2) above. R-OPIF is available to any project accepted to the OPIF or L-OPIF program but must be applied for, and audited, separately. During the 2019-2020 fiscal year R-OPIF helped 5 projects bring some or all of their production work to places like Salem, Vernonia, Government Camp, Girabaldi, and Cannon Beach.
Through the combination
OPIF,
L-OPIF, &
GOLR, the Oregon Film & Video Office recruited and tracked $145,000,000 of film, television commercial, interactive media, and post-production spending in the state during the fiscal year 2019-2020 supporting more than 3000 jobs and countless local vendors. Based on many facts, including that more than 30 states and all of Canada provide film and television producers with film incentives, OFVO believes that Oregon would not have been able to bring this amount of activity to the state without the Oregon Production Investment Fund.
How to Qualify
In order for a filmmaker to qualify for OPIF or L-OPIF, they must meet a set of criteria including: