Raspy vocals. Steel drums. Pleasant acoustic guitar. All set to palatial images of boats and palm trees. It's the type of music video that is in heavy rotation on MTV every day and could grace the iPod of any suburban teenager this summer. The newest release from South 9 Entertainment, a music video production company and artist enclave, is called "How Good" and it might be coming to a stereo near you. But before you tap your foot to it in your neighborhood, South 9 made it rock in theirs.

South 9 Entertainment was the first production company to move into The Neighborhood, a new co-working experiment from the Philadelphia Sound Stages. As a smaller video production center, the Sound Stages have been a haven for entrepreneurial filmmakers in need since its parent company--indie film distribution label Invincible Pictures--opened for business in 2006.

Located in North Philadelphia and designed to look like the set of a 1950's suburban sitcom--think pink flamingos and pastel siding--the Neighborhood allows production companies shooting on the sound stages access to conference rooms, editing bays and equipment rentals in a collaborative environment.

Neighborhood creator and Invincible CEO Tom Ashley hopes the space will add some cohesion to a Philadelphia film industry he believes is in a state of flux.

"A lot of things have changed in the film business in Philadelphia where a lot of companies have shut down or diverged and everything is very spread out," says Ashley. "The idea was to bring the Philadelphia production community back together and give them all a home. This idea of a home and a neighborhood kept coming up until we finally decided to just build an actual neighborhood."

This friendly little slice of fictional suburbia comes with some very real benefits. For starters, it allows on-site access to a stage where several productions, from films to web videos, are produced every day. But beyond that, the Neighborhood hopes to create not only an on-site co-working community but a digital one as well. With an online membership structure and Invincible's new indie film-streaming platform FlixFling (launching March 20th), Ashley hopes to bring Philadelphia's film production community into the internet age.

"Netflix was like the independent producer's best friend when they first came out but as they have grown, they have sort of abandoned the independent filmmaker," says Ashley. "We started as a DVD label and that business has been steadily declining, the retail outlets have been closing down, and everything has moved on to these new ways of consuming content electronically.

This is our reaction to that, to try and keep the production value and the quality of these smaller productions in tact."

If Ashley is looking for posterboys, he may not have to look far past his first tenants. South 9 Entertainment has made its name almost entirely online, creating music videos it distributes on YouTube. Started just eight months ago in the halls of Temple University, the company currently has 3 videos on MTV, in support of musician and South 9 CEO Dave Patten.

And with a cadre of local rap stars and actors in their corner, Patten and producing partner David Ricks are hoping to use the Neighborhood as a springboard into more projects. The pair is currently shooting a promotional reality show in the Dominican Republic but when they get back, they'll return to three more tenants living just up the block.

Patten says he looks forward to meeting the Neighbors.

"The equipment rental discounts are great and the space here really just facilitates everything we are trying to do," says Patten. "As more people move in, the opportunities to collaborate with the neighbors will continue to reveal themselves."

With all their early success, the South 9 team attempted to sustain profits through Pennsylvania's highly-publicized tax credit program.

But, to the chagrin of local filmmakers, the funding was cut last year from $75 million to $42 million.

This, Patten says, has hurt smaller companies looking to get involved.

"The tax credit almost doesn't apply to us," says Patten. "There is such a scramble now that most of that money is soaked up by the first week in January."

This year, the tax credit returns to $60 million and proponents of the program have been calling not only for its reinstatement but for a possible increase, using film projects as an example. Most notably, M.Night Shyamalan, who vowed at the start of his career to film all his projects in Pennsylvania, moved production of his latest film, Devil, to Canada after his foreign distributors were turned off by a lack of state cooperation.

The tax credit's biggest local cheerleader is Greater Philadelphia Film Office executive director Sharon Pinkenson who, for the last 19 years, has been fighting to bring film productions to

Philadelphia. Even with a new governor and a new legislature to contend with, Pinkenson remains confident she can sell our east coast Hollywood to Harrisburg. She has even asked Governor Corbett to join her on a trip out west so he can assure the people of La La Land that the Keystone State is open for business.

"There are some people who think we just giving money away to rich movie stars when that is ridiculous, we are just helping close gaps in the financing and if they don't get it here, they will get it somewhere else," says Pinkenson. "More very small productions access the tax credit each year than larger productions do. And that's what we are fighting for. It is critical that startup companies are getting the same breaks the bigger companies get."

As for the scramble for funding, Pinkenson urges local filmmakers to look her up.

"If these smaller shops haven't spoken to me yet, they should," she says. "They should let us know what they are doing because otherwise, we can't support them directly."

Despite the competition for funding and viewers, Ashley believes filmmaking is still a collaborative business and, now that filmmakers have a place to meet and work side by side, there will be plenty of action for everyone.

"If you have spent any time in LA, the Hollywood world is built on collaboration," says Ashley. "They work together to get things done. And if people are able to throw their egos aside and work together with people that may have other ideas or access to technology or processes that other people may not have access to, it can add to the value of a production and everyone can benefit from that."

JOHN STEELE is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer. Send feedback here.


PHOTOS:

Invincible Pictures CEO Tom Ashley

Ashley in front of 2 Neighborhood houses

The Neighborhood's neighborhood

Inside a Neighborhood house

Dave Patten, CEO of South 9 Entertainment (photo courtesy of Dave Patten)

Studio A in use at Philadelphia Sound Stages

The green room at Philadelphia Sound Stages

All photographs by MICHAEL PERSICO unless otherwised noted.