Ask any Bulgarian to describe his or her country in one word, and “cool” would probably be the last thing that would come to mind. “Small” or “beautiful” or “poor” or “unknown” would be more like it. But it all depends on the view that one takes, because for Phillip Roth, founder and managing director and day-to-day make-it-happen guy of BUFO (Bulgarian United Film Organisation), it was exactly the country’s cool factor that led him to set up shop, or, more specifically, studio here.

It was the late 1990s, and the United States film industry was in transformation. As a producer, director and creator of movies, Roth and his UFO (United Film Organisation) business partner Jeff Beach, like many others in the business, were forced to evaluate the pluses and minuses of being based in Los Angeles.

“We were undergoing changes. We needed to reduce costs drastically. We had a studio in Burbank, but like a lot of companies, we were looking to move offshore,” Roth tells The Sofia Echo. “We needed to find a place in Eastern Europe. Not Australia, not Canada. I wanted to go somewhere cool. Besides, Canada was kind of full.”

They checked out Bucharest, Budapest, Belgrade and... Bulgaria. And, as Roth explains it, “I just had a good feeling about Sofia.” Thanks to the country’s communist history, during which it served as something of a centre for the Soviet movie business, creating more than 40 films a year to meet the empire’s demands, Bulgaria was outfitted with equipment and trained crew to do almost any type of production. For its size, he says, it had a huge per capita infrastructure.

That is, until 1989. By 1990, the business had “shut down”, with very few films being made between 1990 and 1994, something that also caused huge unemployment. In 1994, Roth says that someone came here and made a film with actor Lance Henriksen. “He was terrified,” Roth says. “It was a different time here.”

And things did start to change. In 1996, Nu Image arrived. By 1997/98, there were a couple of films being made a year.

Roth “dug“ the country. And so he decided to establish something here. Enter BUFO. The new company made its first film in “May or June” 2000. At the time, Roth had not yet moved to Bulgaria permanently. He was doing the two weeks in Bulgaria, one week in LA routine, but describes that as “horrible”. By the time BUFO was doing its second film – in November – he realised that he needed to live here full time, which happened not long after.

They were soon making and producing five to six films a year, and business came back to life. “It’s not as big as it was,” he says, “but for the size of the country...”

Interestingly, given the country’s film history, Roth says that Bulgaria is one of the few places where there are second- and third-generation filmmakers working. He cited a number of instances where a parent (typically a father) had been a director or a camera operator or a costume designer, and the child just naturally followed in the parent’s footsteps. “It’s a cottage industry.”

The explosion of video
Roth himself entered the industry somewhat randomly. He graduated from college with a degree in political science. His father, a judge in Roth’s native Oregon, had in mind that his son should follow in his footsteps. But Roth had other ideas. He “bailed out of law school”, and went to work for Hanna Car Wash – one of the largest car wash chains in the world. He had always had an artistic side to him, and managed to work his way into the advertising department. This was in 1982/83, when “commercial video was just kind of exploding”. He got involved in the franchising programme, came up with a video to present the car wash and the rest was history. Kind of.
Because on the weekends, Roth would borrow the car wash’s video equipment, and shoot music videos. He reached a point, as he tells it, where it was time to do a bit more. So he went out and spent three weeks filming this three-minute promo that was full of “non-stop action”. He even got his own pyrotechnics licence, which allowed him to buy dynamite, so allowing him and the crew to blow up cars.

“Why we’re still alive is a mystery,” he says.

But it was 1984, and action sold – particularly when they took the promo clip to the Cannes film market. The clip alone brought in millions in sales, he says, and he eventually sold the rights for it (it being Cold Steel), which allowed him enough money to shoot Bad Trip, once back in Oregon. It was then on to Los Angeles, and no looking back.

Nowadays near requisite for any film, when Roth started out, special effects were all cutting edge.“I’m a dinosaur in the special effects business,” he says. When he made Prototype X29A in 1988, it was his first time using such techniques in a film, and was also the first in-house fully digital film. With a “couple of guys”, he started using PC networks to create “digital farms”. They eventually built their own system, which was, back in 1990, “somewhat primitive, but at the time it was cutting edge”.

When their film Apex went on national release, for a low-budget science-fiction flick, it was a hit.

In 1995, he started UFO, with Jeff Beach joining in 1997. The company focused on low-budget special effect films, and ended up making a number of “moderately successful” movies.

Then the market changed, and UFO was forced to re-invent itself – which is what ultimately drove it to Bulgaria.

They have slowly been building a special effects division here, at first bringing in American trainers to bring the Bulgarian crew up to par. Now, Roth says, Bulgarian animators are as good or better than their American counterparts, this being a result of dedicated training on the part of both BUFO and Nu Image.

“We had to,” Roth says, to stay competitive in the face of India or China – both of which offer cheaper labour, but of a lesser quality.

In addition to being “the number one producer for the Sci-Fi channel”, BUFO is doing a lot of sequels for films like The Grudge, Boogie Man, Lake Placid, Wrong Turn and Mandate. Most of them are horror, with often straight to DVD releases. They’re currently making The Hills Run Red. “Hopefully, it will become a new franchise,” Roth says. “Somebody out there loves it.” But does he? “It’s tough,” he says. “I prefer something a bit more cerebral.”

Subsidies vs low costs
What originally drew many foreign production companies was the low cost of filming in Bulgaria. This is starting to change, with various states in the US offering mass financial breaks (Louisiana offers 25 to 40 per cent rebates on all monies spent, Michigan offers 45 per cent, Connecticut offers 40 per cent, and New Mexico is funding films), and Europe doing the same. Hungary offers a 20 per cent rebate (like Canada does), Germany offers similar or better, and even Romania offers 18 per cent on all in-country spending – and, you still get to recoup your VAT.

Bulgaria offers nothing like this.

“We’re hoping to try to get Bulgaria to seriously address this issue,” Roth says. “We’re now building a 5000 sq m studio in Dolna Malina, which will make it the largest stage lot here – bigger than Boyana. We’ve already built a Western town and the back lot, and are in the process of building a city street. I’m invested here. My fear is that we will not be able to keep the financial side beneficial.”

He tells about Bulgaria’s National Film Centre, which recently started charging 1500 or 3000 leva to “look over” the script, depending on the length of the shoot. At present, the National Film Centre offers no service in return for this fee, something that Roth believes should change.

“I’m hoping that they will eventually realise that they have to come up with an agenda, perhaps something to raise awareness, an incentive to make more money here. Because there is serious money being spent here,” he says.

“Everybody asks: ‘What sort of incentives do you have?’ The only thing that I can offer is that Bulgaria is cheaper. This also prevents us from raising staff salaries.”

Roth says that it is believed that movies are a direct multiplier to tourism in a given location. They bring raw cash into a country, in the form of hotel nights, restaurants, new jobs, equipment rentals, car rentals, actors’ day-trips, location scouting amenities, service fees, and entertainment.

And not only tourism from movie star-hungry teenage girls, but tourism from the actors themselves. When they first started filming in Bulgaria, Roth says that agencies in LA would offer up a “Bulgaria? What? Bolivia? Where?”-type answer. Now, the same agencies will “tell you the hotel, tell you how much they know about Bulgaria – where to stay, the clubs, that their actor wants to go skiing in Borovets...”.

Compared with Los Angeles, Bulgaria’s night life is hot. Actors are used to an LA where everything closes at 11pm, Roth says. So here, where things are just starting at that time, they feel like they’re living large.

“They went crazy for chalga,” he says. First it was Nai Club, then it was BIAD (“BIAD is dead”), then it was Help, and now it seems to be moving back to Nai. He used to go out with the actors, but realised that even fun like that gets old.

“I now avoid going out as much as possible. I’ve got a life to live.”

Outside the studios
Roth has three children – an 18-year-old daughter, a 10-year-old boy, and “the baby”, a girl born in October 2007. His daughter had been going to high school in the Los Angeles area. “Private school, the whole deal,” he says, also saying that she was not thriving there. When she came to Bulgaria, to the American College of Sofia, she proved that living in a new country is no hindrance. Despite the school’s reputation of challenging academics, her grades improved, she was happy and she learnt Bulgarian. She now works at BUFO.

Roth is hoping that his son will come, too.

Taking up his own childhood skills again, Roth has joined Bulgaria’s national ski team. “I’ve got my competitor’s card, and have started racing internationally,” he says, enthusing. “There is a quota system, and there were no Americans racing in Eastern Europe. They love it, because I’m the only American, and at competitions, they can say ‘We have people from two continents’. Then a guy from Ghana also started racing for Bulgaria, and we come in like rock stars. They say: ‘This is truly an international event now!’”

The manager: Phillip 'Phil' Roth
The job: Managing Director
The company: BUFO (Bulgarian United Film Organisation)
In brief: Despite having lived in Bulgaria for eight years, Oregon native Phil Roth still sounds like a Southern Californian when he speaks – that’s what 18 years in the movie industry does to you. Here in Sofia, he runs BUFO, a full-service film production company that he started in 2000. Permanent full-time staff number about 35, with up to 150 additional persons coming on as crew members for a given film.