Jampro has defended the $2.3 million it will spend for new photographs on its film website — filmjamaica — stating that existing images are not regionally competitive to lure filmmakers to the island.

The upgrade follows a downturn in film earnings despite facilitating its first Hollywood film in years.

“Yes it was money well-spent. It was completely necessary to stay competitive in the industry,” stated Jampro’s film commissioner Kim Marie Spence who spoke to the Splash yesterday. “Before the filmmakers come, they will look for what they want (online). The present catalogue doesn’t do us justice.”

The contract was signed prior to Spence’s tenure at Jampro and has local photographer, Christanya Julien as the project’s consultant with a $2.29 million value, according to the Office of Contractor General (OCG) in its contract listing.

The upgrade follows stakeholder consultations which indicated that filmjamaica’s images resembled a tourism brochure, said Spence: “This is not necessarily what filmmakers want. They don’t just want tourism shots but also people and shacks, if it calls for that”.

Spence explained that the site design and back-end will largely remain unchanged but the significant changes will be photographs and links to social networking sites Twitter and Facebook. It will result in the upgrade of filmjamaica.com and other Jampro affiliated sites within “four months”. The OCG describes the contract as the “update of Jampro’s Film Commission locations catalogue and revamp the catalogue by providing high quality contemporary images”.

Interestingly, the contract was first endorsed in March, a month after the Hollywood filming of Knight and Day starring American actors Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, which earned the island over US$1.5 million from one week of filming in Portland. It was the first big budget film to be shot in Jamaica in years.

Despite Knight and Day, the industry suffered a big decline last year: Specifically, capital spend from creative industry projects within film, TV, photography, radio and music declined by one-third to $292.6 million, whilst employment declined by two-thirds to 770 persons during the fiscal year ending March 2010, compared with the prior fiscal year. Jampro which facilitated the statistics in May, blamed the global economic downturn and a reduced marketing budget for the decline but expects improved in this fiscal year.

The appeal of Jamaica as a film destination has arguably waned, with most of the island’s big budget films shot years ago, including How Stella Got Her Groove Back, starring Angela Bassett; The Blue Lagoon, starring Brooke Shields; and The Harder They Come, starring Jamaican-born Jimmy Cliff.

The film commission facilitates film projects in order to generate foreign exchange earning and employment. Part of its strategy of renewal involved the hiring of Spence a former Rhode Scholar, academic and music promoter as film commissioner.

Last fiscal year other noted projects included: Music Nomad, National Geographic; Bigga, Liquid Light Digital; Going Back, Ricochet Films; Nasuba Bank (French West Africa); In The Dance, 21 Home Entertainment; Dance for Grace, Tower Isle; and Small Island, Television Ruby Limited.

The film arguably snubbed Jamaica as the delicate beach scene wasn’t identified as belonging to the island despite explicitly identifying other locations as in USA, Spain, Austria and Chile, which would have aided Jamaica’s tourism recovery following the recent social unrest.