Liane Crawford is Charlotte County's ticket to stardom. As commissioner of the Charlotte Harbor Florida Film Office, her job is to bring commercials, catalogs and the big prize-feature films-to Charlotte County.

It may sound like a glamour job, but Crawford, 52, plays down that angle.

"It's not about being starstruck. It's about doing business and meeting people's needs," says Crawford, whose laid-back attitude and style are more in tune with her Midwest roots than her Hollywood title. At a 2006 "capitol blitz" in Tallahassee to lobby for more money to bring films to Florida, Crawford says she was just as excited to meet then-governor Jeb Bush as she was to meet John Travolta.

When Crawford came in 2005 as film commissioner, she took on a second role as marketing and communications manager for the Charlotte County Visitors Bureau. On her desk are two computer monitors-one to handle the 10,000-plus image bank for the film commission, the other to design the marketing tools for the visitor's bureau. She always carries two business cards with her.

But Crawford never really knows what card she'll be carrying that day until she logs on to her e-mail or checks her BlackBerry for potential film leads from the Association of Film Commissions International or Film Florida. When a lead sounds promising, she chooses her pictures and makes her pitch.

If they want ocean beaches, theme parks and high-rises, Crawford knows she doesn't stand a chance. But a recent call for "a charming resort town" sounded just right. She went to Boca Grande with her Canon Sure Shot and snapped photos of the picturesque village, hoping they would entice filmmakers to bring their $25 million film budget here.

It might be months before she finds out if there's any interest at all. "This job is a lot of hurry up and wait," she says. "You may think something's gone away, and then it gets hot again."

When she gets the green light, Crawford's job is to meet the needs of the film company-scouting locations, securing liability insurance, pulling permits, getting a crew together and even stopping traffic if she has to.

When moviemakers do come, the payoff can be big. In 2005, Hoot, partially shot on Gasparilla Island, which is split between Charlotte and Lee counties, brought in $595,000 in seven days of filming. Last year, with no big movie, the Commission's total revenue was $690,000.

With that kind of money at stake, competition can get fierce among the state's 53 film offices for movies such as Rocket, an independent film starring Sharon Stone and Tom Arnold currently in production in Jacksonville.

To separate Charlotte County from other locations in Florida, Crawford vows to play up Charlotte Harbor as one of the only waterfront areas in the state that is not a sea turtle nesting zone for six months of the year. "They can film at night, use lights and have the run of the sand," she says.

But it's not just movies that matter to Crawford. A catalog shoot for Stein Mart meant 118 hotel nights and a boon for local business.

Julie Mathis, executive director of the Charlotte County Chamber of Commerce, says the film business has the potential to be very important to the area. "Not only does it put heads on beds, but it also increases the exposure of the community in a way that we could never do with marketing and advertising."

The marketing part of her job allows Crawford to be more creative, designing campaigns to lure tourists to Charlotte, a more difficult task after Hurricane Charley devastated parts of the county in 2004.

"Ecotourism is the heart of Charlotte County. Everything else is built around it," says Crawford. Her enthusiasm is contagious as she describes touring Babcock Ranch and gazing down at wild hogs and pristine wetlands there from a sheriff's department helicopter.

Capitalizing on the eco factor, Crawford developed a Geocaching Adventure campaign. Geocaching is an outdoor treasure hunt where participants use a global positioning system or map to search for hidden logbooks, for example, or some type of prize or token. Through Crawford's geocaching initiative, guests at participating hotels win collectible coins, gift certificates for local restaurants and other prizes by tracking down 25 caches hidden around county park facilities.

Because of the nature of her job, Crawford can't say when another movie will come to Charlotte. She responded to more than 100 leads last year and landed just a handful of projects. Many went not to competing counties, but to states with bigger film budgets, such as Texas and North Carolina. "You do a lot of work, and you don't always end up on the winning side of it," she says.

Meanwhile, she continues to send off pictures of Fishermen's Village, Englewood Beach, pelicans and fishhouses, hoping Charlotte has the right look for the right client, large or small.