We’ve been hearing about the increasingly habitual exit of major studio film productions from Los Angeles for a decade now, and since the situation has been compounded by a broken overall economy, things have only gotten worse. Just a few days into January the situation was labeled a “crisis” by FilmLA, the non-profit commission that liaisons productions with the city and does permitting, and a year later the outlook is still bleak.
Film LA has been doing its part to improve the situation though, and aside from pushing a proposal to investigate the creation of genuine film commission through the city council back in January, they’ve also more actively courted the major studios to keep their productions in California. They’ve found some success with at least one big-budget project- Spider-Man.
The reboot of Sony’s major franchise has traditionally shot in LA, with short schedules in NY where the films have taken place. Tradition is no match for dollars though, and Sony seriously looked at all of their options for their 4th Spider-Man film, for which they’ve already severely hedged the budget and exchanged expensive cast and crew members for cheaper and younger talent. Despite a hunger to reclaim every budgetary dime they can, Sony has decided to stick with Hollywood after the commission and city convinced them that they’d have the freedom and resources they needed.
The Los Angeles Times ran a piece on the subject, which mentions a bundle of films like Mission Impossible IV, Captain America, and Yogi Bear that all ditched California for greener pastures– rather, pastures that save more green. According to the article, Spider-Man will generate something close to 1,000 jobs for the state, which is a great figure but merely a temporary dent in the 25,000 jobs (and $4 billion in revenue) that’s been lost in the last decade. 2009 saw the film workers of LA experiencing a crushing 75-80% loss of jobs- that’s not a figure from which you easily recover.
It’s a tough world out there. California has instated new tax credits for film productions, but it only applies to projects with sub-$75m budgets and barely competes with the desperately high incentives from other states. Even a small city like Savannah, GA where I attended school has profited from the flight of projects out of LA, seeing a huge increase in legitimate motion-picture projects and allowing for the creation of new filmmaking infrastructure to keep them there.
My recent visit to Michigan made it clear that the state’s incredible tax rates are sexy as hell to the budget-conscious studios, and they’re all tripping over themselves to cram as many films into the decaying region as possible. When I visited, Michigan was still without a fully functional sound stage or even a basic grip equipment infrastructure, yet the productions were happy to truck in what they needed to make it work. If that state keeps up their incentives, soon enough those sound stages will get built and much of that work will stay. Louisiana, Georgia, Vancouver, New Zealand, New York, New Mexico, Australia, and even North Carolina all have similar stories developing right now. Good news for them.
If you’re interested in “Film Flight” and how rough it is and has been in LA, certainly check out the LA Times piece. There’s a lot more background to look through though, including a Daily News article from January about the aforementioned LA film commission proposal, as well as Guardian UK piece from April of last year about how few big-budget shoots were in the pipeline for LA. Finally, you can get some really nitty gritty detail by looking over the Milken Institutes PDF, slideshows, and videos about Film Flight, and the impact it’s had on the state of California.
LA must the face the fact that they have forever lost their status as the one true epicenter for moviemaking. If they’re gong to reclaim any of that former glory though, they’ll have to do a lot better than a little marketing and minor tax incentives. Whether the state can manage anything better in its current situation is a complicated and not-entirely-hopeful issue, but one can’t help but cross one’s fingers for Tinseltown, if only for the sake of the below-the-liners, and perhaps nostalgia. I’m not going to complain about more filmmaking in my backyard though, and I can’t imagine all of those others places across the world will either…
17 comments
Fuck LA. They screwed themselves. no sympathy. I love that more states are getting in the game. Maybe the movies themselves can take place in some other place than LA and New York now too!
I'd rather have a movie shot in LA than Toronto. Especially if the reason they're doing this is to make it look like New York City.
"and EVEN North Carolina" – sure, like NC is so much more backwards than Louisiana or Georgia. You know "Garden State" was filmed here, right?
Just wrapped a film in LA, if we had gone for permits our budget would have more than doubled.
We're going a lot bigger for our next feature, but we'll be shooting in Michigan, without a chance at getting tax incentives (because of the content of our film) but it's still cheaper to shoot there than LA as far as permits go, so LA can indeed go fuck themselves for doing it this way. And then FilmLA acts like its our fault that our budget isn't quadruple.
Nodoby gives a shit about LA. Guess all the fake kunts with fake tits will need to go elsewhere for "roles". The city itself is a complete dung heap filled with the giant pretentious twats, which is why nobody outside of LA gives a fuck about LA.
Working for a state legislature, the thing I've learned about these state film tax credits is that they're generally a bad deal for states fiscally. They're sexy to politicians because they bring in exposure and PR and big stars and all that, but they make very little sense in terms of generating tax revenue or long-term employment for people. I'm all for fostering a robust, geographically diverse film industry, especially if LA is going to take a half-assed measure to keep the industry that basically built that city, but these incentives aren't great public policy. More wonkish readers may want to check this study out: http://bit.ly/bEYUBv
Everyone's coming to Vancouver baby! Tron, MI-4, Superman (*gasp, no one's supposed to know that yet). We canucks are taking over.
This! This is an article I'm happy to have found on CHUD. The news stories here are necessary but also overrated, as Nick spoke about; the interviews run the gamut of awesome to shitshow; the contests are not my bag; and the reviews, of course, are only as good as the person writing them. But analyses of how the business is actually functioning? That's harder to find, and valuable. I like finding it here.
People are afraid to merge on the freeways in LA.
California can fix these problems whenever it wants to…oh wait, THEY WON'T! They can crack down on unions, THEY WON'T. They can lower taxes, THEY WON'T. They can make permitting cheaper and easier, THEY WON'T. Here in Louisiana, we have right to work laws, low taxation for movies, people eager to help, and a population eager to assist. "You want to shut half the city down? Go right ahead! We'll even make you gumbo!"
Aside from all that, California is just biding it's time until they decide on massive tax increases to subsidize all their ills, special interests, illegal aliens, union benefits, etc. anyway, so why should films risk shooting there and then be caught in the middle of that future jaw dropping money drain?
We in Louisiana, Canada, Texas, North Carolina, etc. will happily welcome Holywood here!
#10, you make Louisiana sound like Xanadu. I'm sure outsourcing films thousands of miles from where they're developed and financed, and staffing productions with transient day-workers with no benefits or contracts will generate more great movies like "Tron: Legacy".
Culver City is pretty good…
South Korea.
Seriously.
"learn to swim."
@#9: Well done, sir.
Vancouver has to compete with Toronto, NYC, Louisiana, Michigan, Australia, UK etc. These places screw themselves with this game of tax incentive upsmanship to kiss the smelly asshole of Hollywood. That's a losing battle. And they're just beginning to figure out how worthless that is. Listen, LA will always be the epicenter of film/television. Maybe not no longer for big budget productions where tax incentives actually make a difference. But REAL talent is in LA. Runaways are inevitable, but LA will screw themselves if they offer incentives. Let the other places fuck themselves over.
Speaking as a movie producer, I'm always going to go where it's cheapest to film, no matter what the incentives, etc. Most of the time, it's actually cheapest to film here. And you may decide where you believe here is.
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