For the span of a month earlier this year, high-speed chases and flipping cars were a common sight in downtown Birmingham, along with closed-off streets, camera crews and Dark Knight star Aaron Eckhart. It was all part of the production of Live!, a police thriller that filmed in the city from mid-May to mid-June. Live! likely won’t be a high-profile release — director Steven C. Miller’s films are often released direct to DVD — but the filming still drew crowds of onlookers, excited to get a firsthand look behind-the-scenes of a real movie set in the Magic City.

Film productions are still a novelty in Alabama, but they’re getting more common thanks to the work of organizations like the Alabama Film Office and Film Birmingham, which are dedicated to making the state as attractive to potential film projects as possible. Their efforts are paying off, too.

“We’ve probably done double the amount of projects than we did last year,” says Kathy Faulk, the manager of the Alabama Film Office. Part of that’s due to the state’s competitive incentives, which include tax credits and exemptions for films with budgets under $20 million. That’s a fairly modest budget cap — Georgia, where blockbusters like the Marvel movies are filmed, doesn’t have one — but Faulk says it’s working for the state. “It allows us to at least have a presence in the film industry,” she says.

It also allows the base of film industry workers who live in Alabama to stay in-state, instead of having to move elsewhere to get work. “In the last year, there has been one film after another, even during the holiday season,” says Film Birmingham head Buddy Palmer. “There are probably, at this point, several dozen people who have moved into crew work pretty much full time… The talent is there, but what they have not had is the opportunity for consistent experience. Now they’re getting that.”

It’s not just movies, either — Alabama’s been the site of everything from international commercials to music videos to episodes of shows on HGTV and Food Network. Faulk and Palmer both note that a lot of those productions find out about Alabama through word-of-mouth in the film industry.

“We’ve got producers coming back for their second, third or fourth projects already,” Palmer says. “We could not buy the marketing value that comes from directors, production designers and cinematographers who get here and see amazing architecture and amazing natural beauty and start filling up their social media feeds with these great shots.”

What is it about Alabama that’s luring in these productions? It’s the incentives and the state’s natural beauty, Faulk says — but she emphasizes that it’s also the people, and old-fashioned Southern hospitality.

“That’s a very real thing,” she says. “I tell [producers] every time, ‘You come here one time, you’re going to want to come back,” she says. “It’s more laid back here, and because it’s new to the people of Alabama, it’s still fun and exciting. I think we’re so eager to help and enthusiastic, and they love that.”