A big drop in reported film industry revenue in the South can only be explained by an industry survey not capturing all the activity in the region, a local film boss says.
The film industry generated about $21million in revenue for the wider Otago-Southland region in the 2016-17 financial year - down from $35million the year before.
However, Film Otago Southland executive manager Kevin Jennings believes there is an issue with Statistics New Zealand's Screen Industry Survey report, which lists film industry revenue around the country each year.
''I find it interesting because both productions and shoot days have increased [in the southern region], yet that number's dropped ... I don't think it's capturing everything,'' Mr Jennings said.
According to the survey, the production spend in Otago-Southland was the fourth-highest nationally, behind Auckland ($374million), Wellington ($307million) and Canterbury-West Coast ($25million).
In total the industry generated $766million for the country during the last financial year - down from $771 million in 2015-16.
Film Otago Southland's annual report, being presented to the Queenstown Lakes District Council Community and Services committee tomorrow, says in the South there was a 3% increase in productions for the financial year, from 188 to 193, and a 17% increase in shoot days, from 507 to 595.
Those were largely driven by filming of big-budget films and TV series, including Wanted 2, Disney's A Wrinkle In Time, and M:I 6 - Mission Impossible.
Mr Jennings told the Otago Daily Times the brand value the region received was possibly more important than the production expenditure.
Wanted 2, for example, was an Emmy-nominated Australian television series that was ''like a postcard for our region''.
A Wrinkle In Time had stars Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling waxing lyrical on Instagram about the area during their time here.
''Tourism New Zealand ran numbers on it ... because they were Instagramming so much, there was a value of $80millon of promotion of brand value put on that,'' Mr Jennings said.
The marketing machine behind Mission Impossible had yet to fire up, but given the profile of the stars, including Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill and Simon Pegg, he expected the brand value to be ''massive''.
