The money tap has begun to flow at the Alaska Film Office, a subdivision of the Alaska Department of Commerce the state legislature has charged with paying out up to $100 million in tax rebates between now and 2013.

The film office has agreed to grant about $170,000 in tax incentives thus far, film office manager Dave Worell says. (Worell was attending a conference in Los Angeles this week, and apologized for not having exact figures at his fingertips.) $170,000 is the total. It’s split between three production companies that have so far had their paperwork approved by the film office. Producers must spend at least $100,000 in state to qualify for incentives.

“Even these smaller productions are hiring some Alaskans,” Worell says, “Maybe not as many as we’d like, but you know, it’s baby steps.” The three productions are Alaska: Most Extreme, which aired on the Discovery Channel this spring, Grizzly Land, a documentary about bears, and Disaster on K2 also airing on Discovery.

The K2 film is based on a spate of connected climbing accidents during the first week of August 2008. The single-episode documentary recreated some climbing scenes in Alaska, and is a combined effort of four production companies, including the Anchorage-based company The Ascending Path.

“Discovery wanted to tell the story, and it’s a really intense story,” says Ascending Path’s owner Matt Szundy. “I think it’s a story that we wanted to tell to clarify and explain what had happened more accurately, in the hope that it can help prevent these things from happening again.”

Szundy and his wife Heather are partners in The Ascending Path. They offer guide services and teach mountaineering skills to non-filmmakers and a portion of their company’s web site is devoted to showing off film credits and their expertise in keeping film crews safe while shooting in the mountains.

Szundy turned on to film about a decade ago, has says. He was at Killington Resort in Vermont when he got a chance to ski as a stunt double on a made-for-TV movie called Trapped: Buried Alive.

“I was there with a client teaching telemark skiing and wound up getting cast,” he says. The experience led Szundy to pursue more opportunities where his mountaineering skills and filmmaking come together.

Last year The Ascending Path added an offer on its web site to become a consultant to producers looking for information on the incentive program. The Ascending Path provided that service for the K2 documentary, and it was instrumental in bringing the production to Alaska. “I was going to work on the project anyway, and they had talked about shooting it in Argentina or Nepal,” he says.

Szundy is a board member of Alaska Film Group, a professional association that lobbied for the incentive program. (He wanted us to disclose that.) He says the group’s membership has increased since the incentive program was introduced and more people seem to be excited about the industry. He also says Alaska producers should learn as much as they can about the program.

“If a small documentary were to play its cards properly—for example an environmental documentary—it could easily take advantage of this program and do quite well,” Szundy says. “There are definitely some stories that Alaskans know and can tell—and that they can definitely tell better than anyone from out of state.”

The film incentive program has two phases. Productions first pre-qualify by giving the state information about their company, the planned production, and how much money they expect to spend in Alaska.

Worrell says 14 productions have pre-qualified so far, and the total amount those producers expect to spend is about $10 million. Only the three productions mentioned above have completed the second phase, Worrell says.

scott@anchoragepress.com