Film and Entertainment

By: Tommy Granville, Jr.

When Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson planted the G-Unit flag in Shreveport, plenty of people understandably saw the celebrity first.

I saw the infrastructure.  That difference matters.

I’ve spent years working professionally in film and television, particularly in the part of the business audiences rarely see: post-production. Dialogue editing, sound design, composing, re-recording mixing, the work that happens after somebody yells “cut” and before audiences ever see the finished product.

So when 50 Cent looked at Shreveport and saw something worth building upon, I understood exactly what he was seeing.

Shreveport has done this before!

The city already possessed something many communities trying to become the “next Hollywood” would spend years attempting to manufacture: production infrastructure.

That’s part of what Jackson has emphasized when discussing why Shreveport made sense for his ambitions. And now G-Unit Film & Television Louisiana is putting serious money behind that vision.

Plans announced with Louisiana officials call for a multi-phase investment exceeding $124 million, including redevelopment of the former Millennium Studios campus, Stageworks and development of the G-Dome, as well as a host of other restaurants and event entertainment centers.

But this is where my insider experience tells me the story gets much bigger.

People outside the industry understandably imagine filmmaking as actors, directors, cameras and somebody yelling, “Action!”  That’s the glamorous part.  Then everybody goes home and people like us have to finish the thing.

A serious production ecosystem needs editors, dialogue editors, sound designers, re-recording mixers, composers, ADR facilities, colorists, visual-effects artists, production offices, equipment companies and experienced crews.

I’ve occupied that world.

My career has allowed me to work behind the scenes on movies and television, including many major productions. Once you’ve lived behind those end credits, you understand something important:
A soundstage is the beginning of an entertainment ecosystem, not the end of one.

That’s why 50 Cent’s Shreveport play has the potential to become much bigger than “50 opened a studio.”  His strategy increasingly resembles an attempt to create an entertainment environment.

The G-Dome broke ground downtown in June, while the larger development vision encompasses film, television, live entertainment and digital media.

That distinction is important because I’ve watched this business long enough to know the real economic prize isn’t just getting a Hollywood production to visit Shreveport.  It’s getting that production to stay awhile.  You want the crew eating here. Sleeping here. Renting equipment here.  Recording here. Editing here.  Mixing here.  Hiring here.

Then you want the next production doing exactly the same thing.  That’s how an entertainment economy develops.  And for me, there’s another fascinating dimension to this story.

From my own studio twenty floors above downtown Shreveport, I can literally look out across a city attempting to reinvent its relationship with entertainment. The G-Dome development is part of that landscape.  That makes this transformation unusually personal.

I’m not watching from Hollywood, Atlanta or New York. I’m watching physical infrastructure rise around an industry I’ve spent years working inside, right here in Shreveport.  And Shreveport isn’t starting from zero.  There are people here who already understand production. There are technicians, stunt people, musicians, filmmakers, engineers, talent agencies, and other creatives who don’t need Hollywood explained to them. Some of us have already worked on the movies and television shows audiences watch every day.

That existing talent could become one of G-Unit’s greatest assets.  Perhaps that’s the most interesting part of the entire 50 Cent story.

Curtis Jackson didn’t arrive in a city with absolutely no movie history and announce that Hollywood was coming.  He arrived in a city that had already been to Hollywood’s dance.

Shreveport had studios. It had crews. It had facilities. It had people who understood production.  What it needed was somebody willing to look at those pieces and imagine them operating together again, on a much larger scale.

There’s still plenty that has to happen before anyone knows exactly how large 50 Cent’s Shreveport experiment will become.  But I know enough about entertainment to recognize the significance of the opportunity.

50 Cent isn’t merely betting that people will come to Shreveport to watch entertainment.  He’s betting they’ll come here to make it.

And from where I’m sitting, twenty floors above downtown, with years of movie, music, and television work behind me, that may be the most interesting Shreveport production I’ve watched develop yet.