Chris Stelly has been named Executive Director of the Louisiana Office of Entertainment Industry Development. Prior to his appointment to this position, Stelly served as interim director from July 2011 through February 2012, and served as Director of Film and Television since 2007.
As Executive Director, Stelly will manage incentive programs targeting development of the film production, digital media, sound recording, and live performance industries.
A Louisiana native, Chris Stelly joined Louisiana’s fledgling entertainment tax incentive program in 2004 from the Office of Governor Mike Foster, where the state’s incentive program got its start. He quickly established a leading role in the film industry’s exponential growth over the next seven years. When Stelly was appointed Director of Film and Television in 2007, Louisiana’s motion picture tax incentive program was showing signs of growth. He was instrumental in increasing the activity in the program exponentially and each successive year of his tenure, motion picture production continued to exceed each preceding year. In 2010 alone, Stelly oversaw 141 incentive applications, with more than 100 productions underway in the state that year.
Stelly’s tireless stewardship of the film incentive program and his business development efforts led to tremendous growth in motion picture infrastructure statewide. State-of-the-art facilities such as Celtic Media Centre in Baton Rouge, Millennium Studios in Shreveport and Second Line Stages in New Orleans opened under his watch.