Barbadian-born, Hollywood-based actor Sean Michael Fields says Barbados is losing out on millions of dollars by not having a government-sanctioned film commission.
While filming their recently-awarded detective noir webseries Dominion, he and his producer Rodney Smith sat with WE Magazine where Fields said the island was missing out on lucrative opportunities that were going to other islands like St Vincent and Dominica.
“I met with Dominica’s film commissioner a week and a half ago and she pointed out that they made US$60 million off of what line of movie to film there. That is a lot of money for a country to make, filming a movie.
“Here in Barbados we are happy because our tourism numbers went up by X percentage. But don’t you think those numbers would go up ten-fold if we started to show what we had to offer instead of constantly showing the same thing over and over again?” he asked.
Fields, who has been cast in movies like Saidi’s Song and Hancock, noted that “while for the past three years a film commission was still being looked at in Barbados . . . [a film commission] is what Dominica and St Vincent did and that is why Pirates of the Caribbean was shot there instead of Barbados”.
“Barbados had an opportunity for it to be filmed here, but because we don’t have a film commission, we could not attract the people from overseas to come in and do that,” he stressed.
While the National Cultural Foundation (NCF) provides events production, technical services as well as a forum for international and regional discussion on cultural issues, and the Barbados International Film Festival (BIFF) in partnership with Barbados Tourism Authority (BTA) highlights new and emerging talent in the Caribbean independent film-making industry, Fields added that Barbados could stand to make a lot more money if it started to understand what was available.
“We have spoken to people left and right in Government including [the late Prime Minister] David Thompson before he passed away. Two years ago when he was in Los Angeles, we spoke on this same topic. That is why I know the issue of having a film commission has been floating around that long and nothing has been done about it.
“I had a running conversation with our Minister of Culture [Stephen Lashley] and I didn’t even know who he was. Here I was complaining about why I can’t do what I would like to do in Barbados and I was speaking to one of the people directly responsible,” he charged.
Fields said once a commission was in place, “we can start training people to international standards. We wouldn’t have to bring in international crews to film. Local crews could be hired to make a living, create their own films and create a stronger industry.
“We can create producers who could be trained to produce at the international level . . . that would lead to creating executive producers who would be willing to fund the projects. The commission could put together real acting classes for film so that people really understand what it means to act for film.”
