The Texas Round-Up

Twelve festival deadlines still open in November, with the fee beside each, plus Houston's five-year film plan, the Texas residency test and the Alamodome day on Selena.

The accountant owns the file and the producer verifies it. Here is what to ask for on day one so the Texas grant paperwork is assembled as you go, and the one metric almost nobody calculates.

Every other source says world-class crew base. Here is which departments actually are, which are adequate, which are thin, and the one you should import, from my own shows. With the method, so you can argue.

It's not one number. It's two tests and a staircase, and the step you land on is set by the day principal photography begins. Everything explained, including the part that's a question for the Commission.

The eight documents the rule requires at the end of a Texas grant, the 60-day clock, the no-additions trap, and what the Austin Film Commission told me in August about where productions actually lose it.

Three Texas pictures at $252K, $2.5M and $5M, run against Georgia, New Mexico and California. The base each state counts decides more than the rate.