As the Honolulu Star- Advertiser reported recently, Gov. David Ige’s State of the State speech called for the economy to “pivot to technology.” Within the tech space, digital media looms front and center.

Think “Hawaii Five-0” or “The Descendants.”

Digital media will not replace the $17.75 billion in visitor spending (in 2019), but there is room to grow.

The TV/film/digital media sector, according to Georja Skinner, division chief of Creative Industries Hawaii at the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, generated an average annual spend of $400 million from 2017 to 2019 and created over 2,400 jobs per year.

Chris Lee, former Hollywood executive and founder of the Academy for Creative Media at the University of Hawaii, says film, video production and digital media could be a billion-dollar industry in Hawaii. Impeding growth, says Lee, is lack of infrastructure, limited personnel and the overall cap on Act 275, which provides tax credits to film production companies.

For filmmaker Jason Lau, founder of Talk Story Productions, a Honolulu-based Oscar-nominated independent production company, the main business “bottleneck” is financing. One solution, he suggests, is to maintain the tax credits (20% on Oahu and 25% on neighbor islands) to compete with other states. “For a series,” says Lau, “studios need to know that tax credits will be there for the life of the show, at least seven years.”

Lau said his latest project, “Story Game,” will premiere in the third quarter of 2021 “if theaters reopen.”

Honolulu filmmaker Bob Bates and his partner, Karen Preiser, a writer and makeup artist, say the state can best expand the industry by creating Hawaii-based content. Bates notes that streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ and other companies are spending billions on content, some of which can be directed toward Hawaii productions.

A CASE in point, he says, is Hawaii-born Kourtney Kang’s project, a Hawaii­-flavored reboot of “Doogie Howser, M.D.” called “Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.,” for Disney+. (Kang found success in Hollywood as a writer and producer on the hit sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”).

Bates and Preiser are currently pitching a screenplay they penned based on “Wave Woman,” a biography by local writer Vicky Durand on her mother, surfing pioneer Betty Heldreich.

Jeannette Hereniko, founder of the Hawaii International Film Festival, agrees that Hawaii has an “incredible wealth of unique stories” and suggests that the state can promote indigenous voices by positioning itself as the center for film and digital media for Asia and the Pacific. This can be done, she says, by taking a page from Brisbane, Australia, which has established the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. To make it happen, she maintains, we’ll need support from the highest levels of government.

To help generate indigenous content, there are organizations that mentor local storytellers.

Chief among them is Creative Lab Hawaii, sponsored the Creative Industries Division of DBEDT. Considered the “grad school” for local screenwriters, directors and producers, CLH teams up with industry professionals such as Michael Palmieri, a respected New York indie filmmaker. Other organizations such as Pacific Islanders in Communications, Good Pitch Hawaii, Hawaii Filmmakers Collective, Hawaii Women in Film and ‘Ohina Labs also work with promising directors, producers, writers and other vocations.

THE UNIVERSITY of Hawaii’s Academy for Creative Media, which operates on every campus, has long called itself a “catalyst for developing 21st-century jobs.” Vili Hereniko, a local filmmaker and ACM professor at UH Manoa, said his students are required to make three films, and in doing so get a taste of everything from script writing to costume design.

Hereniko says ACM prepares Hawaii students for acceptance at the best film schools in the country and assists in local internships. (Hawaii Pacific University also has a respected cinematic multimedia arts program.)

What about opportunities for actors?

Unfortunately, local actors are often on the bottom rung of the food chain. Given the scarcity of productions, very few can make acting a full-time gig. One exception is Jason Quinn, an Oahu native who has worked in “Magnum P.I.,” “Hawaii Five-0,” “Same Time Next Christmas” and “Jason Lau’s Story Game.” Quinn, who attended drama school in New York and returned 10 years ago, also passionately believes that “great local content is key to expanding the industry.”

He’s bullish on Hawaii’s future as a digital media center.

Despite a rocky 2020, Skinner of DBEDT reckons that 2021 will be a landmark year, with three to four television series, a series pilot and other local productions. “Ideally,” she says, “we would want to both attract offshore productions and grow our local content industry.” She notes the latest Hawaii production, “Finding ‘Ohana,” was released Friday on Netflix.

Stay tuned.

Rob Kay, a Honolulu-based writer, covers technology and sustainability for Tech View and is the creator of fijiguide. com. He can be reached at Robertfredkay@gmail.com.