deadCENTER Film Festival Kicks Off

By Colleen Chen, NEWS 9

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Film buffs from around the country are in Oklahoma City for the 9^th Annual deadCENTER Film Festival, while the film community is setting its sights on Oklahoma.

"It's going to grow the film economy here and bring more jobs," Director Alan Norey said.

Novey is a familiar face at the deadCenter festival and has made a career in film in Oklahoma.

"The running joke is, ‘You have to go outside Oklahoma to be able to work in the film industry,'" Norey said.

The festival has grown each year for the last nine years of its history.

"The first year we had to beg people to find films," said the program's Director Melissa Scaramucci.

Setup is smooth now, and finding films is not a problem, but the new tax incentive announced by the state Film and Music commission could push the festival's success further. Starting July, incentives including tax breaks will double.

"If we've got now one of the greatest incentive packages in the country, producers will pull the trigger immediately," Norey said.

Festival leaders said the growth will trickle down to deadCenter.

"The more people that come here and see people excited about film here, and that's it's easy to make film here that means we can have more films to show here," Scaramucci said.

Leaders here are thrilled with the incentives. They think it will make next year's event a bigger success, which will be just in time for their 10 year anniversary.

View the schedule of Events.