San Juan County officials unveil new film backlot

LA PLATA — It’s been 115 years since the first motion picture was shot in San Juan County, San Juan College professor Luke Renner said, noting that milestone was achieved in 1908 — four years before New Mexico became a state.

“We’ve got a legacy,” said Renner, a professor of digital media arts and design at the college.

Renner joined dozens of other film industry representatives, elected officials, students and curious onlookers Thursday, Nov. 9 in celebrating the latest chapter in San Juan County’s film history, the opening of the county’s new film backlot here near the county’s industrial park just south of the Colorado border. The project — which cost nearly $285,000 — includes a half dozen or so buildings or building facades and is designed to be easily transformed into a small Native American pueblo, or a Mexican or Middle Eastern village.

County officials hope the facility will find itself in high demand among filmmakers or television showrunners producing projects that fall in the Western, or Afghanistan or Iraq war genres. Some work remains before the backlot is complete, but Devin Neeley, the county’s film liaison, said the facility is ready now for anybody who wants to use it.

Renner, who spoke to the crowd before a ribbon-cutting ceremony took place, left little doubt he hopes that is soon.

“It’s time for San Juan County to start telling some stories,” he said.

San Juan County Commission Chairman Steve Lanier opened the ceremony by explaining that the money the county spent on the backlot represents an investment in its future as government officials continues to work to diversify the county’s economy, which long has been heavily dependent on the oil and gas industry.

“If you want to score points in the game, you’ve got to get in the game,” he said.

Lanier smiled when he recounted how Neeley and Tonya Stinson, the executive director of the Farmington Convention & Visitors Bureau, approached the commission with the idea of investing in film infrastructure in 2019.

“Diversify with film? How is that even possible?” Lanier said, describing the initial skepticism their idea faced.

But the more Neeley and Stinson talked about the idea, the more apparent it became that rugged, scenic San Juan County — like much of the rest of New Mexico — would be primed to attract film and TV projects, provided it was willing to create some of the infrastructure that those producers require. The state offers film and TV producers a generous package of tax credits that has helped draw hundreds of projects to New Mexico over the past several years, but most of them have been shot in the Albuquerque or Santa Fe areas.

“If we want people to come here and film, we have to find a reason to bring them here,” Lanier said.

The creation of the film backlot follows the renovation of the Totah Theater in downtown Farmington two years ago. That project not only provides the county with a showplace for presenting films and holding film festivals, it also includes office space that can be leased by producers while their projects are being shot here.

Neeley said the backlot was built on a 90-acre site the county already owned that is just south of its industrial park in the far-northern part of the county. The backlot, which is less than an acre in size, is enclosed by a barbed-wire-topped cyclone fence designed to keep its structures secure. But Neeley said the enclosure was designed to be quickly taken down in the event that the backlot is leased for a project, and the structures themselves easily can be modified to represent numerous settings.

“This is the only set like this in the state,” Neeley said, noting that while New Mexico has dozens of movie ranches or sets built to resemble Western towns from the 1800s, it has nothing else resembling what San Juan County has assembled.

“They can make it what they need it to look like,” Neeley said of the set designers who work for TV or film projects.

The remote 90-acre site offers sweeping vistas of the high-desert landscape and the San Juan Mountains to the north – and it does so with few, if any, man-made elements that give away its location or modern-day status, such as buildings, telephone poles, streetlights or even paved roads.

While he acknowledged the opening of the backlot and the Totah Theater will give the county some additional tools to use to lure TV and film productions here, Neeley said the county now needs to develop a roster of behind-the-scenes workers skilled at providing the kinds of services needed on those projects.

“San Juan College is working hard on the other part of that,” he said, referring to so-called “below-the-line” jobs such as grips, camera operators and production assistants. “They’re the ones who do the work of getting the movie done. Those are good-paying jobs that could replace some of the energy jobs that have gone away.”

Renner had nearly a dozen of those San Juan College students with him during Thursday’s event, most of whom were busy operating a jib — a boom device with a camera mounted at the end — to commemorate the occasion. He noted he has been working to help build the county’s film industry for 16 years.

“Our landscape has been one of the leading characters,” he said during an interview with The Daily Times. “But this facility is now part of the supporting cast.”

Renner was all smiles as he looked around during the ceremony, noting with pride that his students were the first film crew to use the facility.

“I think the impact is going to be amazing,” he said.

To illustrate the economic impact a film or TV production can have on a community, Renner cited the filming of a “Stargate Universe” episode more than 10 years ago at the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness. That production alone resulted in the rental of 134 hotel rooms in the county to house the cast and crew members, he said.

If the San Juan County film backlot can serve as the home base for an episodic project on a streaming platform, it won’t take long before the project has more than proven its worth, Renner said.

For now, no projects like that are in the works, but county officials are hoping it’s only a matter of time before such dreams become a reality. In the meantime, Neeley said the job of making San Juan County a film and TV production destination is only beginning.

“It’s exciting,” he said. “But I’m thinking now we have even more work to do.”

Mike Easterling can be reached at 505-564-4610 or measterling@daily-times.com.Support local journalism with a digital subscription: http://bit.ly/2I6TU0e.

This article originally appeared on Farmington Daily Times: Film backlot located on 90-acre site in far-northern San Juan County