Dozens of Los Angeles film and television workers gathered at Los Angeles City Hall on Monday night to share somber stories of layoffs and diminishing job opportunities in the entertainment industry.
It’s been “disheartening as we have watched feature film work flee the city, and television production drop precipitously. Many people have dropped out altogether,” one source told us via our Public Insight Network. On Facebook, Rita Lilly wrote: “Finding work for a lot of nice, hard-working, middle-class people is becoming progressively harder.”
The second reason why the Index is troubling is because our prosperity is not widely shared. It is a story the Index has been telling for many years, but in this 2014 installment the gaps and disparities are more pronounced than ever. These are the hard facts: our income gains are limited to those with ultra high-end skills. Median wages for low- and middle-skilled workers are relatively stagnant and the share of households with mid-level incomes has fallen in Silicon Valley more than in the state and nation. Disparities by race are more persistent than ever. We also saw a sharp increase in homelessness.
FilmL.A.’s 20 year retrospective on local film production analyzes patterns of growth and decline in local filming brought about by developments in the U.S. domestic film, television and commercial production market. The report includes a detailed examination of filming trends across nine distinct project categories, with guidance on data interpretation for lay audiences.
The number of permits requested to make porn films in Los Angeles County has declined by an estimated 95% since the law took effect, according to Film LA, a private nonprofit that issues the licenses. The number of applications fell from about 480 in 2012 to just 24 through the first nine months of 2013.
On-location production in feature films and TV dramas in L.A. has dropped significantly due to increasing competition from other states and countries, according to a report released Tuesday.
The move of legal and professional software development and research positions includes the division known as CounselLink, and will occur in phases through the year.
Film industry and union officials are mobilizing to back legislation this year that would substantially increase funding for the state’s film incentive program and lift some restrictions to make the program more competitive with those offered by New York, Georgia and other states and countries.
. . . Hollywood films, often seen as a risky place to invest money, can be anything but chancy for wealthy investors who have learned that some of those tax breaks can be packaged to generate cash from even mediocre box office results.
Even as new filmmaking centers help spread Hollywood’s wealth around the world, the boost to local economies comes at a personal cost to the specialists who must follow the work.
With the social media frenzy at a fever pitch, people may be excused for thinking that Silicon Valley is still the main engine for growth in the technology sector. But a close look at employment data over time shows that tech jobs are dispersing beyond the Valley and its much-celebrated urban annex of San Francisco.
DC Comics will move its operations from New York City to the Warner Bros Studios lot in Burbank in 2015, according to media reports.
Location production days increased 9.5 percent in the quarter to 11,792, according to FilmL.A., a downtown Los Angeles non-profit organization that handles production permitting in the City of Los Angeles, unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County and other local jurisdictions.
The battle is on to get more support for film and television production from the California government. Only days after Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti put industry vet Tom Sherak in charge of lobbying Sacramento for more tax credits for Hollywood, the Motion Picture Association of America has issued a new call to bolster the incentive program for big-budget blockbusters.
Two state legislators said this week they will introduce motions next January to boost tax incentives for film and television production, one of a handful of bills addressing runaway production.