Bill Vassar is happy to see new activity starting up at EUE/Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington, just as Under the Dome has packed its bags and moved out. News that a TNT pilot will be shot here next month emerged at the same time that the N.C. General Assembly announced agreement on $30 million in film grant funding for each of the next two fiscal years.
 
That bodes well for an upbeat end to what Vassar, the EUE/Screen Gems’ executive vice president, says has otherwise been a “fairly okay year.”
 
Vassar is optimistic about Good Behavior, the TNT pilot for a drama starring Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery.
 
“It will be a big production. Michelle Dockery is a big deal, and TNT has a lot of confidence in it,” he said, adding that project officials believe Good Behavior will be given the green light for a series. He has his fingers crossed that the show would stay in Wilmington if it does get picked up and says he has “had conversations” with those officials about that potential.
 
Because they want to make the best possible case for a proposed new series, television companies will spend much more lavishly on a pilot than on an episode of a show once it’s approved, Wilmington Regional Film Commission director Johnny Griffin said earlier this week. That’s why a pilot, which Vassar said takes only a couple of weeks to shoot, still uses a large crew and significant studio resources.
 
Some of those crewmembers haven’t been gone from EUE/Screen Gems very long. Even though they just wrapped a TV series for another company, the producer and assistant production manager from Under the Dome were tapped to lead the Good Behavior pilot.
 
“They have a group of people they like to work with” lined up for work on the pilot, Vassar added.
 
He is looking forward to seeing other familiar faces coming back to Wilmington once the state grant program gets rolling again. While some younger crewmembers may stay in Georgia, where work continues to be plentiful, the longer-term professionals are itching to come back to Wilmington from projects elsewhere, Vassar said.
 
“They have kids, families here. They own homes here. They want to come home,” he said. “It’s similar to what happened in the ’90s and the 2000s. Crewmembers went elsewhere, picked up additional skill sets and came back better.
 
“Luckily, too, we have UNCW and Cape Fear [Community College] turning out good future employees,” he said.
 
If he could pick an ideal scenario for his studios, Vassar said he would like to see several television series come to town.
 
“The landscape of television has changed a bit,” he said. “Very few series get 20 to 24 episodes any more. Most get 10 to 13 – maybe 18. That works out well for us; we can get shows in here back to back. We can schedule them in such a way that some stages are set up earlier and some later. It balances out. We can handle up to five projects at one time. Under the Dome, for example, set up in January and was done in August. They shot from February through July.”
 
Even if the volume of work at the Wilmington studios doesn’t hit that level, Vassar says he remains at the local facility. EUE/Screen Gems’ new studio in Atlanta is very busy, and a third Southeastern U.S. studio will open next month in Miami, he said.

Still, while he may “help out” at those studios from time to time, he said he's in Wilmington to stay.

"There will be nothing that takes me out of Wilmington," Vassar said.
 
The multi-studio system EUE/Screen Gems has helped the Wilmington facility as well by allowing the local studio to rent lighting and grip equipment to the Atlanta location and improve the bottom line.
 
"That helped us survive this year," he said.