By Charly SHELTON

Living in L.A., filming is a part of daily life. While visitors and vacationers pile on tour busses to hopefully catch a glimpse of a real live film set, residents of the Crescenta Valley need only to visit local grocery stores, barber shops, restaurants or the ever-popular Montrose Shopping Park, a little slice of Midwest town within the 30-mile zone, to see a film crew in action. And Glendale Unified School District school sites are no exception. The opportunity to be a filming location generates revenue for the school site as well as for the district.

At the GUSD Board of Education meeting last week, the board approved a one-year extension of the agreement with FilmLA to have GUSD schools listed as “Film Friendly School Sites.” The new contract runs through August 2017, with options to extend again in one-year intervals to 2019.

“This non-profit organization has worked with the district for the past two years [on this contract] to explore new revenue models to promote film friendly campuses and support educational and extracurricular programs,” said Superintendent Winfred Roberson in his motion to the board within the meeting’s agenda.

The current contract, five one-year installments beginning in 2014, follows on the heels of a previous contract which dates back another four years.

“When GUSD partnered with FilmLA in 2010 and took steps to centralize and streamline its on-location filming license process, the district and its 20 elementary schools, four middle schools, five high schools and two facilities for homeschoolers and special needs students tapped into a potential source of income that brings enormous benefits for educators, parents and the over 27,000 students currently served by the district,” states FilmLA on its website.

FilmLA will coordinate and negotiate with productions that need a school as a location, and will authorize, compile contracts and execute filming at GUSD schools, all for a 16% management fee. After FilmLA takes its fee, the specific school site receives a percentage of the revenue and the rest goes to GUSD, and into the Facility Use Program expenses fund. Last school year, a production filmed at Glendale High School generated $7,290.20 net revenue of which $1,923.80 went to GHS to help fund its programs.

“The extension of the contract with FilmLA will allow the opportunity to generate further revenue using district facilities for future filming locations,” Roberson said.

For more information on filming at a GUSD school, visit FilmLA.com.

  Charly Shelton