By By Gal Tziperman Lotan, News Staff

Welcome to Hollywood east.
A new movie, television and commercial studio in Plymouth, 40 miles south of Boston, will be bringing new internship and co-op opportunities for Northeastern students, a studio spokesperson said.
Plymouth Rock Studios will accept between 14 and 20 college interns this summer for a 10-week, full-time paid program, Nolet said. The deadline to apply for this summer’s program is tomorrow, and students can apply on the company’s website, plymouthrockstudios.com.
Though the 243-acre, 14-sound stage Plymouth Rock Studios are not slated to open until late 2010, spokesperson Bob Nolet said people on the west coast are taking notice.
‘We’re welcoming everybody right now, and have already been getting phone calls from people from Hollywood asking when we’re going to be open because they want to come film here,’ he said.
Inez Hedges, a Northeastern professor of French and German cinema studies, said the studio will be a welcome addition for co-ops.
‘So far, Boston has really been known for documentaries,’ she said. ‘The big change is that this is going to be fiction.’
Unlike most cinema studies internships, which are unpaid, the Plymouth Rock jobs will offer students a $500 per week stipend.
The internships will also provide a good opportunity for local networking, Hedges said.
‘Everything in the industry is really about networking and marketing yourself,’ Hedges said.
The cinema studies program began offering a ‘Making the Short Film’ class this semester in response to students’ interest in fictitious films, Hedges said.
‘We are very excited about getting students more interested in fiction,’ she said.
Nolet emphasized the practical experience interns will have.
‘It’s a hands-on experience that isn’t really offered anywhere else [in the Boston area],’ Nolet said. ‘We’re looking for a wide variety and range of interns.’
Students interested in production work, video editing, finance, marketing, public relations or business are welcome to apply, and the studio will ‘absolutely’ be open to accepting co-ops within a year and a half, Nolet said.
The Massachusetts state legislature approved a 25 percent tax credit, which took effect January 2007, to encourage the movie industry to set up shop in the area. The credit played a large part in the studio deciding to come to Plymouth, as did the need for a studio with genuine New England settings, Nolet said.
‘The tax credit was a big incentive for coming here, but also, we just fell in love with Plymouth,’ Nolet said. ‘There are also some studios in the Carolinas, some in New York and Connecticut, but nothing to the scale of what we’re doing here.’
Some South Shore residents are also looking forward to the studio, according to local media reports:’ a ‘Hollywood East’ sign stood on the lawn in front of Plymouth town hall until town workers took it down in June when local veterans objected to the sign obstructing the view of the Vietnam and Korean war memorials.
The studio will create 2,000 to 3,000 temporary construction jobs, then another 2,000 permanent jobs and also some positions for interns and co-ops, Nolet said.
Because most east coast studios are built in cities, the suburban location of Plymouth Rock will be an asset.
‘This is going to be built in a nice area in the middle of the woods,’ he said. ‘People come to Massachusetts to film movies, but they don’t have any place to film them, no sound stages.’
The studio is located half a mile away from the Plymouth commuter rail stop, and will be the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified movie studio in the world, Nolet said.
Plymouth Rock has partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create new technology, including robotics and cameras.
‘We are going to have the best, newest technology,’ Nolet said. ‘It’ll be a healthy, happy place to work and the technology is going to blow people away.’
There is also a proposal from a different company to build a studio in Weymouth, 15 miles south of Boston, in a defunct air force base, according to local media reports.