Earlier this fall, the OKC City Council approved a three-year contract with the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber to establish and operate the Oklahoma City Film & Creative Industries Office. The new office was created to support and promote Oklahoma City’s burgeoning film industry. Jill Simpson began her new role as the film office’s executive director this fall. VeloCity recently sat down with Simpson for a conversation about her career and how the new office will impact Oklahoma City.

VeloCityOKC: For those of our readers who may not know much about you, would you please tell us a little bit about yourself?

Jill Simpson: My entire professional career has been working in film production, around film production and around film education. I studied film at OU and worked on a movie in Tulsa called “Rumble Fish” right afterwards that Francis Coppola directed, and I was an extras coordinator. And then after that, I moved to Los Angeles. I ended up staying 20 years in LA working in feature films and television.

How was your experience in LA?

Jill Simpson: I loved it. I found it to be really exciting to be there. As I started getting older, I started questioning whether that’s where I wanted to be the rest of my life and, in the end, chose to move back to Oklahoma about 20 years into my stay in LA.

Was there something in your early life that got you really interested in the film industry?

Jill Simpson: I told my parents when I was nine years old, I was going to work in the film industry and was going to live in California. I studied film at OU under Ned Hockman. He came to class one night and said Francis Coppola is filming in Tulsa. I would go on the weekends and watch from the sidelines as he was filming the “The Outsiders.” That summer, when he returned to film “Rumble Fish” in Tulsa, I once again went up there to observe. It was late, and he wasn’t surrounded by people. I just walked up to him and told him I just graduated with a film degree and all I wanted to do was observe, and if I could be allowed to watch I’d be so grateful. That led to a job wrangling extras in the Greenwood District on the big film nights.

How will your film industry background help you in your new role as executive director of the OKC Film & Creative Industries Office?

Jill Simpson: I was the director of the Oklahoma State Film Commission for 10 years. I took that office from two or three people to probably seven people when I left. We were supporting both the film industry and the music industry, but in that job, I learned all about outreach and advocacy and community networking. The communities are key to what we’re trying to do, and especially now that it’s a city office and I’ll be working closely with the city government, with industry stakeholders here in Oklahoma City and with community leaders.

What do you hope to accomplish for the film office over the course of the coming year?

Jill Simpson: One of the short-term goals is to connect the dots. When I was going out to meet with individuals who own companies, work in the industry or offer educational  programs, I was finding that a lot of those people weren’t connected with each other. I see this office serving as a hub and a means of bringing these people together so they can coalesce into a meaningful group. In the long term, for any film environment to work around the country, there have to be three pieces of the equation. Workforce development is going to be a big part of what I have my eye on, working with area colleges and universities and CareerTech campuses, but also groups such as the Film Education Institute of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Film and Television Academy. As much work as we have going on here in Oklahoma, we really have to come up with a comprehensive and cohesive training program that is turning out qualified crews to work on not only homegrown projects but the bigger projects too. You also have to have the facilities, which we really have grown around here. Finally, it’s important to have an incentive program.

Would you please tell us about the OKC Film Incentive Program and what impact you expect it to have on OKC’s film industry?

Jill Simpson: The program, which will launch this month, is funded to $3 million. It offers a 5% base cash rebate to qualifying feature films with a minimum local spend of $500,000, and episodic scripted and reality television projects with a minimum local spend of $100,000. An additional 5% may be available to projects taking advantage of a variety of uplifts, including filming on an Oklahoma City sound stage, filming multiple features or episodes locally, hiring more than 50% local crews and vendors, and filming more than 75% of the project within the Oklahoma City city limits. The program is intended to not only help in the recruitment of projects to the Oklahoma City metro, but to provide support to our local filmmaking community.

This story originally appeared in the November 2022 edition of the VeloCity newsletter.