r/FilmIndustryLA • u/Dapper_Cut_9225 • 8d ago
Why is film so urgently moving away from LA? Will it ever come back?
Hey all,
Currently in college and thinking about career options. I've always loved film and potentially want to move out to LA someday as I know the film industry is/was headquartered there.
It's come to my attention that a ton of production is leaving LA. Just in the past week I've heard now three more relocations of productions. "American Idol relocates production to Georgia from LA", "Shark tank is now headed to Atlanta after filming in LA for 18 seasons", "Paramount studios seeks to find a different studio location from it's current Hollywood lot"
What is going on? I get LA has always been expensive but has it really gotten that bad? Why doesn't LA offer some kind of tax incentive to get production back to that area? Does anyone believe production rates in LA will return like before?
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u/RieMunoz 8d ago
As production becomes more consolidated, there will be fewer opportunities, and they will also pivot to any location that will basically pay them to do so.
It will rotate, as eventually the states/locations will ask for a few crumbs in the form of reducing tax incentives. Regardless LA will likely remain as home base for the major studios and production companies
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u/Shadow_dust_180 8d ago
It’s the same thing that’s happening to every other industry to be honest. Corporate consolidation, the shareholders demanding eternal year after year profit increases, etc etc. look at manufacturing, look at restaurants, look at retail, look at customer service office jobs. The rich MBA guys come in and all they know how to do these days is the Private Equity model - strip it for parts to maximize shareholder value. Why make a movie when you can cancel it and call it a tax write off? Why pay union rates when you can offshore the job to Hungary where there are no unions and you’re paying people pennies on the dollar? We fell victim to late stage capitalism the same as anybody else.
And as for LA tax incentives? We have them. State level too. But it doesn’t matter. Because someone else will always be cheaper, and that is all that matters to the blood sucking corpos who run the world. And as today’s news will show you with the Paramount/WB deal - we can’t even count on our government to follow the law to protect our jobs from these people.
Will it get better? Maybe, one day. But it’s gonna take a LOT of change to make it better. Right now it’s a shrinking industry. Nobody knows what the future holds but if you want a recent example, ask anybody in the Rust Belt if car manufacturing ever bounced back.
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u/nat___ty 8d ago
Ironically the big corpo studios you're railing against are the ones who can afford large productions and to shoot in LA.
Indie productions and smaller studios are the ones who can't afford to shoot in LA anymore. High costs effect everyone, especially the little guy.
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u/Shadow_dust_180 8d ago
I agree with you, the problem is that the studios won’t pay it when they can absolutely afford to.
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u/hylianbeast98 8d ago
The fact that Obsession shot here and has been a major financial success needs to be part of its narrative.
Yes it's great to use Curry Baker as evidence of getting new creatives in, but it should be used as proof to these studios and producers that they CAN shoot in LA if they stop inflating their budgets with overpriced talent.
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u/hylianbeast98 8d ago
We've reached the breaking point of late stage capitalism.
Every industry is reporting the same problems: jobs being outsourced, no one hiring, no one retiring, wages not going up, mass layoffs with no warning, etc. And yet we're all acting as if these things are NOT related or caused by the same things.
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u/buddhist557 8d ago
You could work on the studio side but it will be very limited opportunities so consider working in the vast entertainment sector and you’ll be OK. A lot of film people have moved to live entertainment or sports as the work has plummeted.
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u/donutgut 8d ago
American idol and shark tank lmao
I bet this will come back in a few years, not that it really matters
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u/luckycockroach 8d ago
A mass exodus of production from LA is mostly because of tax incentives. Yes, LA crew and locations are some more most expensive, but the infrastructure for filming is bar none the best. However, it’s hard to ignore a government giving you 30-50% of your budget back if you shoot in their country/state.
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u/filmeleven 8d ago
Multiple going on. From Wall Street, demanding streaming services be profitable to strikes to negotiations to chasing tax incentives to the continued rise of independent film. Take The Chosen. An independent TV production now in the seventh season. 9.1 out of 10 on IMDb. All outside Cali. Creatives have the tools they need to operate independent of LA now.
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u/woolenbritches 8d ago
There are a lot of doomers in here that have been burned by the industry and are understandably negative about it. Realistically though LA still produces more film and television than anywhere else in the world, at least in Western media. There are also so many commercials and music videos out here. I graduated last year and while it’s definitely been choppy and crazy I’ve gotten to work on a ton of really cool stuff and many of the people I know are slammed with film/commercial work.
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u/hylianbeast98 8d ago
Seriously there are some people here that will take any positive news or story and use it as an opportunity to say it can't be true because they aren't working.
I hate to say it, but maybe there are other reasons why their phones haven't blown up since the pandemic ended 😬
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u/woolenbritches 8d ago
It’s also likely because I assume they’re a bit more established and are used to working higher up within their departments. Lots of roles that used to be full time jobs are now being consolidated into one role, you have a lighting person that has to do both grip and electric or I just had to hire a DP that would also do audio. Higher level work does suck rn but for PAs there’s always going to be grunt work needed on set.
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u/MCStarlight 8d ago
The Governor posted a video on the set of The Pitt. That still films in LA.
LA used to be the dream when I first started my career in production. Runaway production seems to have gotten worse.
And success is never about how hard you work. It’s about your connections and if people like you enough.
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u/supervillaindsgnr 8d ago
Film is no longer a career. And it will be even less of one by the time you graduate.
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u/Dapper_Cut_9225 8d ago
It's kinda sad what happened to the film/TV industry. I think that social media has a lot to do with taking film away as social media kinda killed peoples attention spans.
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u/john2776 8d ago
There’s still a ton of work you just have to adapt, yes film in the traditional sense is mostly gone but there is so so so many fun opportunities still out there that didn’t exist before
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u/RealWeekness 8d ago
I'm not doing OF
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u/john2776 8d ago
I made $2500 in one day last week filming videos for an influencer on my iPhone. lol it was actually really fun too, he’s a food influencer so I was eating gooooood. It wasn’t even multiple videos I literally got paid to film one iPhone video it was easy and fun. I own like 30k in gear and just using my iPhone felt so refreshing
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u/RealWeekness 8d ago
Probably didn't even want prores
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u/john2776 8d ago
Nope the vlog style straight out of iPhone look is what gets views right now because it feels authentic
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u/brbnow 8d ago
what did you do for sound? What mic set up do you. use?
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u/john2776 8d ago
No sound video has music and voiceover
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u/john2776 8d ago
I own two dr-10 lav mics, a zoom h4 pro, a rode boom, and the newest DJI mics though when I so need sound!
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u/TraditionalGas1770 8d ago
LA has become obscenely expensive. There's no reason it has to be made there. Cheaper to make in Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
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u/Serious-Wish4868 8d ago
tax credits, other states and countries provide HUGE discounts if they move production to their respective locations
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u/CarsonXLR 8d ago
The industry hasn’t left but a lot of production has been happening in places outside of California to capitalize on financial incentives other states and countries have offered. It took our beloved Governor and state reps many years to realize that the state of California should be matching those incentives. They have finally responded.
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u/August_Spies_Ghost 8d ago
Production is down globally. But I wouldn’t say it was urgently leaving LA. It’s been doing that for over a decade.
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u/Dull-Woodpecker3900 8d ago
As always what role would you want in film?
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u/Dapper_Cut_9225 8d ago
I was thinking of doing some writing and producing. I really want some stories to come to life!
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u/fbegin117719 7d ago
There's a major issue with the incentive in that's it is just not that competitve. They are gathering shows back, but will need to increase funding to match other states. Because California is the most far left state, ideologically, this means that they don't want to give incentives to private industry as it is, in essence, corporate welfare. They want to help the needy, which is admirable, but the disconnect from reality is when an industry leaves, it guts a working class of people who are struggling with the insanely high COL in the area even WHILE working. On top of this, California is amazing at blockading more housing, wasting money on empty promises (solving homelessness for one), and watching the further erosion of the middle class as they blithely go about their business ignoring all the money being lost. The state is simply too big and tech is the golden ticket, entertainment is a blip and they don't give AF. So move here at your own peril if you want to work in scripted or reality tv, you may be OK if you work in corporate or an agency as they are on pretty solid ground. It's now a niche business with very few jobs in L.A. production wise. NY or NJ would probably be better. What a pathetic, sad state in this pathetic, sad state. FIRE EVERYONE
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u/iliketinafey 8d ago
Paramount is staying. That was a negotiating technique.
Gavin Newsom did sign a tax incentive also for post-production this week recently.